Deborah O'Carroll > Deborah's Quotes

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“But real life is not art.”
― Eleanor Cameron, The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books

“You remember the fairy tales you were told when you were very small - 'once upon a time...' Why do you think they always began like that?"
"Because they weren't true," Simon said promptly.
Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, "Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember when.”
― Susan Cooper, Over Sea, Under Stone

“One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.”
― Patricia C. Wrede

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”
― Beatrix Potter

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Behind one truth there is always yet another.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Iron Ring

“Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do (2) Things we've got to do (3) Things we like doing. I say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of these three reasons, things like reading books they don't like because other people read them.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“I'm not a criminal,” said Paddington, hotly. “I'm a bear!”
― Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington

“Servants ran to wake the young king, Tamar, already awake and watching from his balcony. Curious, naturally. Not altogether pleased. No more than anyone would be, jolted out of a sound sleep by unexpected elephants.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Iron Ring

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“It's so awful and sad,” she once admitted to Tom Goodenough, “to belong to a race that no sane person believes in.”
― Mary Norton, The Borrowers Afield

“An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night—wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor (“bleak,” Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there should be scullions; mine host should be gravy-stained and broad in the beam with a tousled apron pulled across his stomach; and there should be a tall, dark stranger—the one who speaks to nobody—warming thin hands before the fire. And the fire should be a fire—crackling and blazing, laid with an impossible size log and roaring its great heart out up the chimney. And there should be some sort of cauldron, Kate felt, somewhere about—and, perhaps, a couple of mastiffs thrown in for good measure.”
― Mary Norton, The Borrowers Afield

“Just make sure that the thing you're living for is worth dying for." --Levi”
― Jill Williamson, Captives

“I told Mr. Rook you were disinherited and he rushed back to help you. Mr. Rook is a rather remarkable person.”

“Oh, chuck it,” said Mr. Rook with a hostile air.

“Mr. Rook is a monster,” said Father Brown with scientific calm. “He is an anachronism, an atavism, a brutal survivor of the Stone Age. If there was one barbarous superstition we all supposed to be utterly extinct and dead in these days, it was that notion about honour and independence.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Scandal of Father Brown

“Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address; a castle in Spain. [...] Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Secret of Father Brown

“I understand you're a common street thief?"

Peter bristled. "Hardly a common one.”
― Julie Berry, The Amaranth Enchantment

“Things are going round and round in my head--or maybe my head is going round and round in things.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“I'm delirious. Spots are crawling before my eyes."
"Those are spiders.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“I make that four horses and ten men just to get rid of one old woman. What did you do to the King?”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“Really, these wizards! You'd think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?" she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet.
"I'm dying of boredom," Howl said pathetically. "Or maybe just dying.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."
"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“I think we ought to live happily ever after.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle