Jonathan Stroud Quotes

As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there's no rigour to it.

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.

If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.

In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through." I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry." "Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes." "What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?" "More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)

Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.

That's usuаllу hоw thеу start, thе young оnеs. Meaningless waffle.

I had a chance at him now. Things were a bit more even. He knew my name, I knew his. He had six years' experience, I had five thousand and ten. That was the kind of odds that you could do something with.

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies.

That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland

listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy --- let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it... --- ye-es... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going.

What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

The column hung above the middle of the pentacle, bubbling ever upward against the ceiling like the cloud of an erupting volcanoe. There was a barely perceptible pause. Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke. Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him. And it did, too.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing.

Not bad in short, though the last one [understanding the language of animals], isn't half as useful as you might expect, since when all's said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: a) the endless hunt for food, b) finding a warm bush to sleep in the evening, and c) the sporadic satisfication of certain glands. (Many would argue that the language of human kind boils down to this too)

Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)

Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.

As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.

"I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you" - here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly - "is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.