Top 160 Jonathan Stroud Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.”

— Jonathan Stroud

2. “I’m coming back.”

— Jonathan Stroud

3. “Besides, if you’re going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.”

— Jonathan Stroud

4. “A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That’s raw intelligence for you.”

— Jonathan Stroud

5. “The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace’s. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelace’s again. Take it and enjoy the consequences.”

— Jonathan Stroud

6. “So stop worrying about the past. The past is for ghosts. We’ve all done things that we regret. It’s what’s ahead of us that counts.”

— Jonathan Stroud

7. “Can you define “plan” as “a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance”? If so, it was a very good plan.”

— Jonathan Stroud

8. “I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They’re fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It’s an odd mix of fantasy and reality.”

— Jonathan Stroud

9. “Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.”

— Jonathan Stroud

10. “What is a gathering without unseemly drunkenness?”

— Jonathan Stroud

11. “Don’t worry. I know we have our differences, but there’s a lot of mutual respect there. If he hesitates, I’ll sweet-talk him. He won’t let us down.” “That total and utter idiot,” Lockwood growled. “That mustachioed imbecile. That benighted, blinkered jobsworth. He’s a clown! A fraud! An oaf! I hate him.” “How’s the mutual respect thing going?” George said.”

— Jonathan Stroud

12. “Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you.”

— Jonathan Stroud

13. “Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.”

— Jonathan Stroud

14. “Nothing could keep me from you. Nothing in life or Death...”

— Jonathan Stroud

15. “Do you remember,” George went on, “what we found in the tunnels beneath Aickmere’s? Aside from a massive pile of human bones.” “I found Lucy,” Lockwood said.”

— Jonathan Stroud

16. “Well, she may think it was her idea, but I’d been looking for an excuse to get you back all winter.”

— Jonathan Stroud

17. “That’s a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland.”

— Jonathan Stroud

18. “I was having dark thoughts about waffles.”

— Jonathan Stroud

19. “Ignoring the whispers of the skull, which kept suggesting different, unlikely kitchen utensils that could be used for murder, I sketched out a map of the room.”

— Jonathan Stroud

20. “Take his appearance. There was something about it that acted as a trigger to one’s worst instincts. His face was uniquely slappable – a nun would have ached to punch him – while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick.”

— Jonathan Stroud

21. “That’s usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.”

— Jonathan Stroud

22. “I was making for 35 Portland Row.”

— Jonathan Stroud

23. “If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.”

— Jonathan Stroud

24. “Lucy, I’m a malevolent skull, without an ounce of compassion. You’ve got to be worried if I’m feeling sorry for you.”

— Jonathan Stroud

25. “This was how you did it. This was how your spirit stayed strong. This was how you looked death in the eye and defied it.”

— Jonathan Stroud

26. “As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don’t like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.”

— Jonathan Stroud

27. “This is the way it was with Lockwood, his shifts were sometimes so sudden that they took your breath away. But his energy and enthusiasm were always impossible to resist.”

— Jonathan Stroud

28. “What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?”

— Jonathan Stroud

29. “Doubts, like ghosts, gain strength in darkness; even with the dawn I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing.”

— Jonathan Stroud

30. “Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it.”

— Jonathan Stroud

31. “Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you. Everything pauses while you do familiar things with taps and kettles; it allows you to catch your breath and become calm.”

— Jonathan Stroud

32. “His dark eyes sparkled as he looked into mine. In that instant it was as if nothing in the world fascinated him as much as me.”

— Jonathan Stroud

33. “What was it about Albert? He seemed to live almost entirely in the present, able to cut himself off from the unpleasantness of the past and the perils of even the most imminent future. Sure, it kept him in more or less constant danger of death, but it was not the least of his talents. Scarlett, on whom certain aspects of the past weighed heavily, found that she envied it greatly.”

— Jonathan Stroud

34. “Their first stop, naturally, was the library.”

— Jonathan Stroud

35. “There was a quality about him – fragile, but at the same time steely and undaunted – that managed to awaken your sense of pity without irritating you at the same time. In a world where no kid can really afford to be helpless, where most of us risk our lives in a matter of course, that was quite a hard balance to achieve.”

— Jonathan Stroud

36. “I rather think he knew anyway.”

— Jonathan Stroud

37. “I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni, N’gorso the Mighty, and the Serpent of Silver Plumes! I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague. I have spoken with Solomon. I have run with the buffalo fathers of the plains. I have watched over Old Zimbabwe till the stones fell and the jackals fed on its people. I am Bartimaeus!”

— Jonathan Stroud

38. “Lucy,′ Lockwood said, ’the last time I saw body language like yours was when we were chatting to Martine Grey about her missing husband, and afterwards found him at the bottom of her freezer.”

— Jonathan Stroud

39. “Hey, we’ve all got problems, chum. I’m overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.”

— Jonathan Stroud

40. “Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I’ll settle for the screams of the dying.”

— Jonathan Stroud

41. “Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon’s principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”

— Jonathan Stroud

42. “She was so radiant, it was like the other-light was already on her.”

— Jonathan Stroud

43. “Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.”

— Jonathan Stroud

44. “And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.”

— Jonathan Stroud

45. “Peace and quiet. That’s one thing to be said for deserts. They give you a chance to get away from the everyday pressures of life. And when those everyday pressures consist of seven furious djinn and one apperplectic master magician, a few hindered thousand square miles of sand, rock, wind, and desolation is exactly what you need.”

— Jonathan Stroud

46. “Unfortunately, the body within the uniform belonged to Quill Kipps, so the overall effect was like watching a plague rat lick a bowl of caviar. Yes, the classy element was there, but it wasn’t what you focused on.”

— Jonathan Stroud

47. “This is what the Problem means,” he went on. “This is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and ivy. We lose them twice over, Lucy. Death’s not the worst of it. We turn our faces away.”

— Jonathan Stroud

48. “Julius Tallow was a fool. He appeared complacent, but like a weak swimmer out of his depth, his legs were kicking frantically under the surface, trying to keep him afloat. Whatever happened, Nathaniel did not intend to sink with him.”

— Jonathan Stroud

49. “The short, fat fingers moved like dancing sausages across the strings;.”

— Jonathan Stroud

50. “Death is fugitive; even when you’re watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don’t get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you’ve missed it.”

— Jonathan Stroud