Diana Wynne Jones

Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.

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

You owe me. You roasted my father.

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings

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!

The demon at length fell to singing a gentle, flickering little song. It was not in any language Sophie knew - or she thought not, until she distinctly heard the word "saucepan" in it several times...

There is very seldom any true secret.

Oh! Polly thought. Why aren't all girls locked up by law the year they turn fifteen? They do such stupid things!

When you grow up to be an author and write books, you'll think you're making the books up, but they'll all really be true, somewhere.

And suddenly, as if her head had cleared, she was quite sure that wonderful things did indeed exist. Even if they__e only in my own mind, she thought, they__e there and worth fighting for. I mustn__ give in.

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.

As she turned left to the gateway, it occurred to her that swimming was only one of a very large number of things she had no idea what to do. Peter had been right to object to her ignorance. "It's not that I'm lazy," she explained to Waif as they arrived in what seemed to be stables, "or stupid. I've just not bothered to look round the edges of Mother's way of doing things, you see.

Some people are thoroughly self-centred. This thing goes with me. I need it for moral support.

People are wrong when they say things like, __ didn__ have time to think._ If you__e really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you__e doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you__e working hard at something else.

Polaris often remarks to Sol that Sirius loses his temper much less often these days. But the one sure way to send him into a flaming rage is to suggest that he finds a new Companion. Sirius will not hear of it. The small white sphere circling his goes untenanted, because he hopes that what Miss Smith said is true.