Imagination doesn’t just mean making things up. It means thinking things through, solving them, or hoping to do so, and being just distant enough to be able to laugh at things that are normally painful. Head teachers would call this escapism, but they would be entirely wrong. I would call fantasy the most serious, and the most useful, branch of writing there is. And this is why I don’t, and never would, write Real Books.
Diana Wynne JonesWhat makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.
Diana Wynne JonesYou're wearing that hat? After all the magic I used to make your dress pretty?" ~Howl from the movie 'Howl's Moving Castle
Diana Wynne JonesMr. Stock came out of the competition tent carrying his zeppelin marrow on one shoulder and demanding to know what was going on. When he saw the hordes advancing on Aidan, he charged off that way, whirling the great vegetable. The Puck, who was rushing behind the horde, yelling at them to grab Aidan and kill Rolf, was Mr. Stock's first victim. The marrow caught him THOCK! on the side of the head. It laid the Puck out cold on the grass, but the mighty vegetable remained intact, mottled and glossy
Diana Wynne Jones