Diana Wynne Jones (1934 – 2011)
English author notable for her fantasy novels for children and adults, as well as a small amount of non-fiction.
Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people’s lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day.
"I had a mitherable childhood. Nobody loved me. I think I have a right to try again, looking pwettier, don't you?"
Please, your story, or I shall offend the dignitaries of my kingdom by yawning at holy things.
I was a thoroughly hardened Homeward Bounder. There seemed nothing I didn't know.
Then I ran into Helen. My friendly neighbourhood enemy. There really was nothing like Helen on any world I'd ever been to. I sometimes didn't think she was human at all.
There was a little white statue there. Now I'm not artistic. I saw it was of a fellow with no clothes on - I always wonder why it's Art to take your clothes off: they never put in the goose pimples - and this fellow was wrapped in chains. He didn't look as if he was enjoying himself, and small wonder.
To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.
"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."
"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?"
"Oh, Lord! He's a weeper!" Grandad said disgustedly. "I wish I'd known. I'd have stayed away."
"A lot of Merlins have cried when they prophesied," Dad pointed out.
"I know. But I don't have to like it, do I?" Grandad retorted.
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".
"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!"
"The only good Dorig is a dead Dorig."
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.
"Don't you even feel how marvellous it is to have talked to one of the Little People?" I said.
"No, not as the main thing," Grundo grunted. "If you think like that, then you're treating him like something in a museum, not as a person."
"Amazing. You're here, but you can't do a simple thing like raising light, or do I mean lazing right? Whichever. You can't. Why not?"
"No one ever showed me how," I said.
He swayed about, looking solemn. "I quote," he said. "I'm very well read in the literature of several worlds, you know, and I quote. What do they teach them in these schools?"
"But she's too big!" the anguished man said, still glaring at Vivian. "This girl is not the right size!"
...
"She was six when she went away, Father," Jonathan said. He did not seem in the least alarmed. "That was nearly six years ago. Think how much I've changed since then."
"So you have," said this alarming man, turning his glare on Jonathan as if he did not think the change was for the better. "I see," he said. "She grew."
"Oh, what a sweet little doggie!" Mrs Baker cried out. "Is ooh hungwy, then?" She gave Waif the rest of the cake she was eating. Waif took it politely, ate it in one gulp and continued to beg. Mrs Baker gave her a whole cake from the plate. This caused Waif to beg more soulfully than ever.
"I'm disgusted," Charmain told Waif.
"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?" Sophie asked angrily. "I was just describing Howl."
"If you call me V.S. once again," she said, "I shall scream - I warn you!"
Sam patted her arm. "You need a butter-pie," he said kindly.
It was very boring. Perhaps it was his job to be boring, Vivian thought, in which case he was very good at his job.