Jo Walton Quotes

“Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“Bibliotropic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotropic, they naturally turn towards the sun. We naturally turn towards the bookshop.”

“I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.”

“Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.”

“If you love books enough, books will love you back.”

“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.”

“Avan was as religious as the next young dragon with his way to make in the world—which is to say that he held many traditional beliefs which he had never paused to examine, attended church because it would have seemed strange not to, rarely paid much attention when he was there, and found piety out of the pulpit thoroughly misplaced.”

“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”

“One of the things I've always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you'd never have thought about before.”

“It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.”

“If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.”

“Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.”

“I hate it when people imply that people only read because they have nothing better to do.”

“Marrying her to prove I do not subscribe to an outdated convention of class would be just as foolish as refusing to marry her because I did.”

“All farms are much alike everywhere, and all wild places have their own beauty.”

“What you can't pay back you pay forward.”

““I don’t need to be a radical to think that who a dragon is counts more than birth or wealth,” Selendra said, with what dignity she could.
“Why, that’s the very definition of a radical,” he retorted.”

“There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.”

“It was only now that they realized that there is nothing that can really be a preparation for death.”