Quotes from Wizards at War

Diane Duane ·  552 pages

Rating: (4.9K votes)


“How am I supposed to save the universe with all this noise?!”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“You do have the idea of being ‘just good friends?’”
He gave her a sideways look. “For so high and honorable an estate,” Roshaun said, “ ‘just’ seems a poor modifier to choose.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“I’m lying on a Star Wars bedspread,” said a dry voice behind them, “Will I ever be able to look myself in the eye again?”
They all turned.
“By the fact that I’m not on Rashah,” Ronan said, looking about him, “but instead apparently in suburban hell, and in contact with this dubious cultural artifact, I take it we won?”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“Nita drank her tea, watching Roshaun read while he maneuvered the lollipop from one side of his mouth to the other. The bulge it produced looked very out of place against his otherwise flawless facial structure.
Roshaun felt Nita’s gaze resting on him, and looked up. “What?”
Nita controlled her smile. “The lollipop…”
“What about it?”
“I hate to say this, but you’re kind of spoiling your grandeur.”
“What grandeur he has,” Dairine remarked.
“Kings are made no less noble by eating,” Roshaun said. “Rather, they ennoble what they eat.”
“Wow, who sold you that one?” Nita said.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“Yeah, I know, the Mars thing. I've been meaning to talk to you about that. When did you get the idea it would be cute to carve my dad's cell-phone number on a rock in the middle of Syrtis Major? He hates it when people call me on his phone."
Kit gave Nita a resigned look. "Sorry," he said, "I couldn't resist.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War



“Except when the freedom is one you don't choose to grant," Memeki said, more loudly this time. She was shaking herself all over, struggling to stand stright again. "You hold our hope with one claw and take it away with her other! I may be weak and doomed soon to die, but I will die as an I, not just one more nameless scarp of shell to be thrown out into the sucking mud! No matter how little a time it lasts, I will be what all these are" -she looked around at Kit and Ponch and Nita and the others-"selves unto themselves and being what matters to each other! Such a life, even a breath's worth of it, is better than anything you've ever given me!" Memeki was trembling again, but with passion with determinatin, desperate and doomed. She took a stem toward the dias, and another, her claw lifted not in that old gesture of submission, but in one more like a warrior's threat. "I will be what the Voice said I was, the Hesper I will be the Aeon of Light, the Power that made a different choice from yours. I will be the Star that did not fall, no matter how little a time the light lasts!”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“You look concerned,” Roshaun said from behind her.
Dairine scowled over her shoulder at him. “The whole universe is in danger,” she said, “and we’re not sure how to save it, assuming it can be saved. One of the Powers That Be has stuffed secret messages into my brain without telling me. And a friend of mine who happens to be my wizard’s manual is being reprogrammed with software that even these guys haven’t had time to beta test! Wow, Roshaun, why would I need to be concerned?”
Roshaun glanced at the ground. Another chair appeared for him, a slight distance from Dairine’s. He lowered himself into it, stretching out his legs with a sigh. “Sarcasm,” he said, “Amusing, if ineffective.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“Beware! said the peridxis's voice in her head. Don't let It's shadowy little truth overwhelm the greater one.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“It was the Arch-votary, with its patterned shell. Slowly, it approached; those massive claws raised…The Arch-votary stopped, looming up before them. “Evil ones,” it said, “enemies of the Great One, come and be judged.”
Roshaun raised his head and gave the Arch-votary an inexpressibly haughty look. “Killed, perhaps,” he said, “But your dark Master has neither authority nor right to judge us. Therefore, stand away, lackey, and keep silent in the presence of your betters.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“I was going to ask you,’ Nita said, ‘whether all that was what I thought it was.’
‘If you thought that dogs now finally have their own version of the One,’ said the Transcendent Pig, ‘then the answer is yes.’
Kit was shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he whispered. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my dog—my dog was—’
‘Is. Yes, it’s the “spell-it-backward” joke again,’ the Pig said, with some resignation. ‘The One just loves those old jokes. The older, the better.’ It raised its bristly eyebrows. ‘Making a big BANG! and running off to hide behind the nearest chunk of physical existence, like some kid ringing the doorbell at Halloween. And the puns. Don’t get It started on the puns...you’ll be there forever.’ It smiled. ‘Literally. But what did you expect? Your dog started making universes out of nothing. That wasn’t a slight tip-off?’
‘And not just making them,’ Nita said. ‘Saving them.’
‘Or saving one person,’ Kit said.
‘It’s the same thing, I’m told,’ said the Pig, and it vanished.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War



“Things change,” said the former Sunlord, “as we see.” And once again he looked at Dairine. “You arrive for your people’s first sight of you as Sunlord, and what do they also see, standing at your side? An alien, garbed in raiment much like that of Wellakhit royalty, wearing some other world’s life-color, gemmed like a Guarantor. The rumors are flying already. Does another world have designs on the rule of ours? Either by straightforward conquest, or more intimate means?” Dairine’s eyes went wide as what he meant sank in. “You mean they think that we—that I—You tell those people that they are completely nuts! Even if I were old enough to think about stuff like this, which I seriously am not, I have zero interest in being anybody’s queen! Especially not his—” And then Dairine stopped short as she saw the peculiar look that had appeared on both Roshaun’s and Nelaid’s faces. “Uh,” she said then, and blushed again. “Maybe there was a less tactful way I could have put that . . .” That”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“There’s something odd about the primary’s flare pattern.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Dairine said. “I chucked a black hole into it.”
Roshaun put his eyebrows up. “Stars in your neighborhood seem to have a rough time of it.”
“If ours acts weird, talk to Nita,” Dairine said, rather annoyed. “First time it went out was on her watch.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


“Kit raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean we should tell [Carmela] that being hot on Ronan is actually being hot on both a cranky Celto-Goth hottie and a senior Power-That-Is who spent most of the last ten years on earth wearing a macaw costume?’
Nita looked at him.
‘Nah,’ Kit said at last. ‘Let’s not say anything. Let’s just let it play out.’ And then Kit broke up laughing.
Nita’s look grew annoyed. ‘You’re enjoying the idea,’ she said.
‘Oh yeah!’ Kit managed to say. It took a while to get control of his laughter.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Wizards at War


About the author

Diane Duane
Born place: in New York, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“My Crow A crow flew into the tree outside my window. It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow. Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow. Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore, after the battle. This was just a crow. That never fit in anywhere in its life, or did anything worth mentioning. It sat there on the branch for a few minutes. Then picked up and flew beautifully out of my life.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from All of Us: The Collected Poems


“To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two...

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there...”
― Jane Jacobs, quote from The Death and Life of Great American Cities


“If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist. ”
― Meg Rosoff, quote from What I Was


“Consider the turtle. Perchance you have worried, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seem rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with the turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the way of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer? Time for a turtle’s egg to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. They have no worries, have no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you? —Henry David Thoreau Journal August 28, 1856”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House


“he says at last, bidding me good evening as though it were”
― Pam Jenoff, quote from The Kommandant's Girl


Interesting books

What Happened to Lani Garver
(3.3K)
What Happened to Lan...
by Carol Plum-Ucci
Fighting Redemption
(9.9K)
Fighting Redemption
by Kate McCarthy
Don't Look Back
(23.2K)
Don't Look Back
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
The Winner's Kiss
(30.6K)
The Winner's Kiss
by Marie Rutkoski
Tiger Eyes
(13.8K)
Tiger Eyes
by Judy Blume
A Long Way Down
(70.1K)
A Long Way Down
by Nick Hornby

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.