Quotes from 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, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“The truth between two people always cuts two ways.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from 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, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“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, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“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, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“Mr. Lynn gave her one of his considering looks. "People are strange," he said. "Usually they're much stranger than you think. Start from there and you'll never be unpleasantly surprised. Do you fancy doughnuts?”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“Polly finished her huge narrative during the summer term. The day after she had finished it, she went round with the oddest mixture of feelings, pride at having got it done, sick of the sight of it and glad it was over, and completely lost without it.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“You've rotted your mind with reading books.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

“That is the path of Wickedness, though some call it the Road to Heaven.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock

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Popular quotes

“It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Backroads to Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal

“Ede had been pregnant not quite the full term: eight months, two weeks, four days. She had lapsed into an extended silence - partly because she was still in mourning - still enraged and afraid of speech. And partly, too, because the child itself had taken up dreaming in her belly - dreaming and, Ede was certain, singing. Not singing songs a person knew, of course. Nothing Ede could recognize. But songs for certain. Music - with a tune to it. Evocative. A song about self. A song about place. As if a bird had sung it, sitting in a tree at the edge of a field. Or high in the air above a field. A hovering song. Of recognition.”
― Timothy Findley, quote from The Piano Man's Daughter

“Nature had once produced an Englishman whose domed head had been a hive of words; a man who had only to breathe on any particle of his stupendous vocabulary to have that particle live and expand and throw out tremulous tentacles until it became a complex image with a pulsing brain and correlated limbs. Three centuries later, another man, in another country, was trying to render these rhythms and metaphors in a different tongue. This process entailed a prodigious amount of labour, for the necessity of which no real reason could be given. It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combination of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same manner, with the same double and single spots of sun rippling in the same position, at the same hour of the day. From a practical point of view, such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost criminally absurd, since the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Bend Sinister

“He stopped. “You're upset. I'll shut up and leave you”
― Iris Johansen, quote from The Killing Game

“So I graduated from college with a degree in journalism and was ready to find my dream job at a newspaper in addition to one good man who owned his own car and was certain about his sexuality, my two new, revised qualifying criteria for a potential date.”
― Laurie Notaro, quote from Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.