Top 250 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “He could not believe things could get any worse – so they had to get better.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

152. “You can’t blame that genie for hating everyone,” she said. “Think how you felt shut in that dungeon.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

153. “By this time, half the people in High Norland were gathered in Royal Square to stare at the castle. They all watched with disbelief as the castle rose slightly into the air and glided toward the road that led southward. It was hardly more than an alley, really. “It’ll never fit!” people said. But the castle somehow squeezed itself narrow enough to drift away along it and out of sight. The citizens of High Norland gave it a cheer as it went.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

154. “Now there, Charles,′ said Chrestomanci, ’you have an excellent example quite apart from rights and wrongs, of why it is such a bad idea to do things to people. Everyone is now sorry for Simon. Which is not what you want at all, is it?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

155. “Pudgy is comfortable,” said Julia. “It must be a nuisance to look like a china doll, the way you do.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

156. “She held one of her father’s huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

157. “I’m going up to my room now, where I may die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

158. “Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

159. “I could cut a star out of paper and drop it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

160. “What’s the good of being civilized, that’s what I’d like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can’t.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

161. “Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

162. “If you knew the trouble we’ve had because Howl will keep falling in love like this! We’ve had lawsuits, and suitors with swords, and mothers with rolling pins, and fathers and uncles with cudgels. And aunts. Aunts are terrible. They go for you with hat pins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

163. “O most excellent of carpets,” he said, “O brightest-colored and most delicately woven, whose lovely textile is so cunningly enhanced with magic, I fear I have not treated you hitherto with proper respect. I have snapped commands and even shouted at you, where I now see that your gentle nature requires only the mildest of requests. Forgive, oh, forgive!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

164. “She had said Sophie was a witch. Oddly enough, Sophie accepted this without any trouble at all. That explained the popularity of certain hats, she thought. It explained Jane Farrier’s Count Whatsit. It possibly explained the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste. It was as if Sophie had always known this. But she had thought it was not proper to have a magic gift because she was the eldest of three.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

165. “My mother says that laundry breeds if you don’t wash it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

166. “I put my arms round her. For just a mere, single instant I had a real, heavy body in my arms and a moist face against my cheek, with a real, difficult personality to go with them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

167. “If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

168. “Sophie knew Howl could sound unhappy in heaven if it suited him.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

169. “You people keep spoiling my plans. First Wizard Suliman would not come near the Waste, so that I had to threaten Princess Valeria in order to make the King order him out here. Then, when he came, he grew trees.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

170. “And indeed if you think you’re a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you’re no good, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

171. “Or had Howl slithered out so hard that he had come out right behind himself and turned out what most people would call honest?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

172. “She stared at the King. The King stared back. It was a disaster.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

173. “In fact, Cat was fairly sure Tonino was feeling just the way Cat had felt himself when he first came to Chrestomanci Castle, and Cat could not get over the annoyance of having someone have feelings that were his.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

174. “Of course you hate getting angry!” she retorted. “You don’t like anything unpleasant, do you? You’re a slitherer-outer, that’s what you are! You slither away from anything you don’t like!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

175. “She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

176. “A book for children, like the myths and folktales that tend to slide into it, is really a blueprint for dealing with life. For that reason, it might have a happy ending, because nobody ever solved a problem while believing it was hopeless. It might put the aims and the solution unrealistically high – in the same way that folktales tend to be about kings and queens – but this is because it is better to aim for the moon and get halfway there than just to aim for the roof and get halfway upstairs.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

177. “May I remind you, Howard, that mens means “the mind” and mensa means “a table”? But I expect in your case the two things are the same. No, no, don’t scratch your head, boy. You’ll get splinters.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

178. “People are wrong when they say things like, “I didn’t have time to think.” If you’re really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you’re doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you’re working hard at something else.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

179. “Sophie and Howl were living – somewhat quarrelsomely it must be confessed, although they were said to be happiest that way – in the moving castle again.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

180. “The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, “The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

181. “Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World. – Ka’a Ort’o, Gnomic Utterances, Civ.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

182. “You’ve rotted your mind with reading books.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

183. “Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

184. “Why am I holding a dog full of angels?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

185. “Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady. The lady looked at it with contempt. “This one doesn’t do anything for anybody. You’re wasting my time, Miss Hatter.” “Only because you came in and asked for hats,” Sophie said.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

186. “That is the path of Wickedness, though some call it the Road to Heaven.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

187. “You won’t believe the amount of trouble we get because Howl keeps falling in love,” Michael said, “We’ve had law suits, suitors with challenges, fathers with cudgels, mothers with rolling pins. And aunts. Aunts are terrible, they go for you with hat pins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

188. “For answer, Calcifer stretched out a blue arm-shaped flame divided into green fingerlike flames at the end. It was not very long, nor did it look strong. “See? I can almost reach the hearth,” he said proudly.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

189. “And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

190. “It was time for a strong-minded woman to take charge. Abdullah was quite glad that Sophie was one.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

191. “My word, he’s ugly!′ Howl said. ‘Chip off the old block.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

192. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

193. “In the study, The Book of Palimpsest was, for some reason, now open at “A Spell to Find Yourself a Handsome Prince.” Charmain shook her head and closed the book. “Who needs a prince?” she said.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

194. “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

195. “I’ve seen golems. They don’t behave like a real person.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

196. “A very short burst of thought was enough to convince Abdullah that his situation, despite the chains, would be very much worse if he became a toad.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

197. “Nobody’s safe in a wizard’s house.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

198. “Howl said, “I think we ought to live happily ever after,” and she thought he meant it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

199. “But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities – besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

200. “Perhaps she was a little mad, but then old women often were.”

— Diana Wynne Jones