Diana Wynne Jones citations

Page 2

“What a strange family you are! Is your name Lettie too?”

“He picked up the skull and knocked an onion ring out of its eye socket.
"I see Sophie has been busy again. Couldn't you have restrained her, my friend?" The skull yattered its teeth at him. Howl put it down rather hastily.”

“She was remorseless, but she lacked method.”

“Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.”

“Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else.”

“Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol.”

“All she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to 'jutht TRY it.”

“Howl’s voice was presently heard shouting weakly, “Help me, someone! I’m dying from neglect up here!”

“Learn to drive?"
"Never," said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger.”

“It's amazing the way one can take a step ten and a half miles long and still always land in a cowpat.”

“Sophie said a bad word. In the dim light she had stubbed her toe on one of the many dusty bricks piled around the place.
Naughty-naughty" Twinkle said.
Oh shut up!" Sophie said, standing on one leg to hold her toe. "Why don't you grow up?”

“Howl said to Sophie, "I've been wondering all along if you would turn out to be that lovely girl I met on May Day. Why were you scared then?”

“You have no right to make jigsaws of people.”

“Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?”

“Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.”

“In addition, Master Twinkle seems convinced that someone is denying him a pair of stripey trousers.”

“Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them.”

“I've often noticed" Fiona said, "that when people say, 'This can't happen in this day and age', they say it because it is happening.”

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

“Sorry, I've had enough of running away, Sophie. Now I've got something I want to protect. It's you.”

“Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.”

“I seem to have excalibured this knife.”

“You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!”

“But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.”

“Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World.”

“If you must know, I-I had never in my life kissed a young lady, and you are far too beautiful to me to want to get it wrong!”

“All these things that crib and cab in your brain, in your imagination, are in fact things that might well in later life drive you insane.”

“A garden should be natural-seeming, with wild sections, including a large area of bluebells.”

“Then watch out. I warn you!"

"That is very considerate of you," said Chrestomanci. "I like to be warned.”