Quotes from book
Fire and Hemlock

Name: Fire and Hemlock
Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Fire and Hemlock is a modern fantasy by British author Diana Wynne Jones based largely on the Scottish ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer".

“Happiness isn't a thing. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 311.

“The truth between two people always cuts two ways.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 392.

“But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities--besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“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.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“I don’t think I will get married,” Polly said as she stood up. “I’m going to train to be a hero instead.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“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.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

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

“"Heroes see things like that," he said.
"It's obviously an enchantment of some kind," Polly agreed, humouring him.
"It must be," he said. It sounded as if he was humouring her.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 34.

“If nothing happened, then there's nothing to remember," she told herself, trying to sound philosophical. "Of course there's nowhere to start.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 14.

“Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 29.

“Happiness isn't a thing.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things."
Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 311.

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