Diana Wynne Jones: Trending quotes

“Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair short back and sides and only girls had hair that grew long.”

Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 99.

Diana Wynne Jones book A Tale of Time City

Source: A Tale of Time City (1987), pp. 16-17.

“"It looks as if you need only enter the field for long enough to recognise the bannus and take hold of it. Then you order it to stop."
"Fight my way through a mob of dancing girls and snatch the dulcimer off the leading damsel," Reigner Two said morbidly. "I can just see myself. I think the fools who invented this thing might have thought of a simpler way to stop it. What's wrong with a red switch?"”

“Dear Polly,
Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair.
This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can.
Yours ever, Sam.”

Source: Hexwood (1993), p. 138.

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 265.

“I have been with the Court all my life, travelling with the King's Progress.
I didn't know how to go on. I sat and stared at this sentence, until Grundo said, "If you can't do it, I will."
If you didn't know Grundo, you'd think this was a generous offer, but it was a threat really. Grundo is dyslexic. Unless he thinks hard, he writes inside out and backwards. He was threatening me with half a page of crooked writing with words like "inside" turning up as "sindie" and "story" as "otsyr".”

“"Look here," Gerald said, "what do you think of Giants?"
There was the kind of pause that happens when people do not like to say what they really think.”

Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), p. 7.
First lines of the novel.

“"Oh, thank goodness!" he babbled. "I didn't mean it - at least I did, but I don't mean it now, not any more!" He flung one arm around Yam and twisted the other into Mordion's rolled cloak. "They came. They rustled. Don't let them!"”

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 166.

“"Curse those two time-ghosts!" he almost shrieked. "They made me quite sure you were the Time Lady! But you're not, are you? I could tell you were a real Twenty Century person with every word you said. Mickey Mouse!" he yelled.”

Source: Hexwood (1993), p. 255.

Diana Wynne Jones book A Tale of Time City

Source: A Tale of Time City (1987), p. 87.

“If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever.”

“Adara was impressed. "How do you know that?"
"I learnt it," said Hathil. "It pays to learn things."”

Source: Dalemark Quartet, Cart and Cwidder (1975), p. 212.

“I had a mitherable childhood. Nobody loved me. I think I have a right to try again, looking pwettier, don't you?”

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 25.

“Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break.”

Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 306.

“"What you do is find your centre - can you do that?"
"My navel, you mean?" I said.
"No, no!" he howled. "You're not a woman! Or are you?"”

Source: Dalemark Quartet, Drowned Ammet (1977), p. 233.

“The only good Dorig is a dead Dorig.”

Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), pp. 113-114.

“Over scones round the kitchen table, it emerged that Aunt Mary thought Ayna, Gair and Ceri came from Malaysia. Brenda looked at their faces and breathed in half a scone.
While Gerald was pounding Brenda on the back, Ceri leaned back from the vibrating table and looked at Aunt Mary limpidly in the eye. "I'm afraid we don't remember Masaylia at all."
"Malaysia!"”

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 9.

“Ann looked down at him, spread on the bank preparing to go to sleep, and lost her temper. "Then you should go and tell him! You should look after him! He's all alone in this wood, and he's quite small, and he doesn't even know he's not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You - you calmly make him up, out of blood and - and nothing, and you expect him to do your dirty work for you, and you don't even tell him the rules!”

hissed Ayna.
"Or that either," said Ceri.
Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 174.

“"It is of course a magic carpet."
Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. "Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets," he agreed. "Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe," he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, "it is said to never wear out?"”

You can't do that to a person!"
Source: Hexwood (1993), pp. 54-55.

“Tell me of this Wizard Howl of yours."
Sophie's teeth chattered, but she said proudly, "He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he's sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly and you can't pin him down to anything."
"Indeed?" asked Abdullah. "Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies."
"What do you mean — vices?”

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), pp. 16-17.

“"I don't believe this!" Peter said. "Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap?"
"That," Charmain said haughtily, "was an accident."”

Sophie asked angrily. "I was just describing Howl."
Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), p. 214.

“One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person's himself."
"What a strange idea!”

Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 109.