Top 40 Diane Duane Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”

— Diane Duane

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Clever Quotes

2. “The Spear in the Other’s heart is the spear in your own: you are he.”

— Diane Duane

3. “Footsteps in the snow suggest where you have been, point to where you were going: but when they suddenly vanish, never dismiss the possibility of flight...”

— Diane Duane

4. “Belief made no difference to the truth.”

— Diane Duane

5. “Well, the rollout of new technology always affects how wizards do business.”

— Diane Duane

6. “You should know how terrible a power belief is, especially in the wrong hands – and how do you tell which hands are wrong? Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow.”

— Diane Duane

7. “Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?”

— Diane Duane

8. “How am I supposed to save the universe with all this noise?!”

— Diane Duane

9. “A little science. A little magic. A little chicken soup.”

— Diane Duane

10. “Do it now and avoid the June rush! Fear death by water!”

— Diane Duane

11. “Dear Artificer, I’ve blown my quanta and gone to the Good Place!”

— Diane Duane

12. “I will meet the cruel and the cowardly today, she thought, liars and the envious, the uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not mean I have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commissions comes from Those Who Are.”

— Diane Duane

13. “It’d be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things. – Rhiow.”

— Diane Duane

14. “There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.”

— Diane Duane

15. “If you see an injustice, and don’t move to right it when you have a chance, history won’t forget that, either.”

— Diane Duane

16. “So rage, proud Power: fail again! And see my blood teach Death to die!”

— Diane Duane

17. “The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.”

— Diane Duane

18. “When governments murder those who speak the truth, it is time to get new governments.”

— Diane Duane

19. “All the drawing lacks is the final touch: To add eyes to the dragon.”

— Diane Duane

20. “And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”

— Diane Duane

21. “What teens will realize is always a mystery to me. I’m still realizing so many things myself, very belatedly, that it seems unwise to think I have any right to be showing people things in hopes that they’ll realize them.”

— Diane Duane

22. “I may have one more ‘Star Trek’ novel in me, but it would be in the old universe, not the new one.”

— Diane Duane

23. “Those who don’t know the mistakes of the past won’t be able to enjoy it when they make them again in the future.”

— Diane Duane

24. “Most people think it’s normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul.”

— Diane Duane

25. “Doctors couldn’t be everywhere, so the Lord invented Vulcans. I thought you knew.”

— Diane Duane

26. “It’s always been the children who have saved the universe from the previous generation and remade the world in their own image. – Carl.”

— Diane Duane

27. “My first generation of young readers now have not only children, but some of them have grandchildren to whom they’re introducing their old passion.”

— Diane Duane

28. “You walk on water, and complain that you can’t find anything to drink!”

— Diane Duane

29. “Sometimes we do not hear the Whisperer even at her loudest because she speaks in our own voice, the one we most often discount.”

— Diane Duane

30. “She tried to walk softly and wished the trees wouldn’t stare at her so.”

— Diane Duane

31. “What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.”

— Diane Duane

32. “Those who want war will find causes, no matter how many of them you take away.”

— Diane Duane

33. “What’s loved, lives.”

— Diane Duane

34. “We knew you were hurting,” Gelert said. “But sometimes – that idiom about being there for somebody, actually just means to be there. Doing anything, saying anything, sometimes you know it’ll hurt them worse than just being quiet, and being close.”

— Diane Duane

35. “When friends couldn’t be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life that was getting too much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes by the pictures in a book of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rain-forest, a fuzzy photo of Uranus with it’s up-and-down rings, or a prismed picture taken through the faceted eye of a bee.”

— Diane Duane

36. “She thought briefly of one police force in a neighboring state, some years back, which without a second thought had for many years classified people murdered in its jurisdiction as “male victim,” “female victim,” and “prostitute.”

— Diane Duane

37. “Become careless with fire, and sure enough, fire will burn you. Do treachery, and treachery will be done you. Kill, and be punished with death. All these I’ve done. Now I pay the price, in my own flesh and blood.”

— Diane Duane

38. “Meowing is not counted here, since cats rarely seem to meow at each other. That type of vocalization is usually a “pidgin” language used for getting human’s attention: the cat equivalent of “Just talk to them clearly and loudly and they’ll get what you mean sooner or later.”

— Diane Duane

39. “Beware! said the peridxis’s voice in her head. Don’t let It’s shadowy little truth overwhelm the greater one.”

— Diane Duane

40. “Even in your world, people have died for words. Sometimes they’ve died of them. One learns to be careful what one says in such a world. And like anything so powerful, like any weapon, words cut both ways. They redeem and betray – sometimes both at once. The attribute we name as a virtue may also turn out to be our bane. So we watch what we call things – in case we should turn out to be right.”

— Diane Duane

41. “This is why one must be careful with life,” her father had said, in very controlled wrath. “Death is the most hateful thing. Don’t allow the destruction of what you can never restore.”

— Diane Duane

42. “When honor dies – when trust is a useless thing – what use is life?”

— Diane Duane

43. “What is the point of celebrating diversity if one tries to make all the elements of it the same?”

— Diane Duane

44. “Not even Spock had stayed aboard for that – he found breathing vacuum for any length of time to be aesthetically unpleasant.”

— Diane Duane

45. “With four-to-one odds against us, our ability to leave the encounter without serious damage becomes seriously impaired.” “Spock,” McCoy said gently, “your bedside manner is flawless. You mean, we’re all going to be blown to hell.” Spock hesitated, then nodded.”

— Diane Duane

46. “As I said, wear flats. No point in injuring them with heels while they’re abasing themselves.”

— Diane Duane

47. “They took her intent and read that too, turning it into fact.”

— Diane Duane

48. “At any rate, after five years Surak came out of the wilds, took a small apartment in the capital, near his parents’ house, and began to write for the information networks.”

— Diane Duane