Jo Walton > Quotes

“It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”
― Jo Walton

“I'll belong to libraries wherever I go. Maybe eventually I'll belong to libraries on other planets.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“If you love books enough, books will love you back.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Bibliotropic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotropic, they naturally turn towards the sun. We naturally turn towards the bookshop.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“One of the things I've always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you'd never have thought about before.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn’t supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn’t care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I don’t think I am like other people. I mean on some deep fundamental level. It’s not just being half a twin and reading a lot and seeing fairies. It’s not just being outside when they’re all inside. I used to be inside. I think there’s a way I stand aside and look backwards at things when they’re happening which isn’t normal.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Know Thyself. It’s good advice. Know yourself. You are worth knowing. Examine your life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Be aware that other people have equal significance. Give them the space to make their own choices, and let their choices count as you want them to let your choices count. Remember that excellence has no stopping point and keep on pursuing it. Make art that can last and that says something nobody else can say. Live the best life you can, and become the best self you can. You cannot know which of your actions is the lever that will move worlds. Not even Necessity knows all ends. Know yourself.”
― Jo Walton, The Just City

“I hate it when people imply that people only read because they have nothing better to do.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.”
― Jo Walton

“Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“And there's no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I sat on the bench by the willows and at my honey bun and read Triton. There are some awful things in the world, it’s true, but there are also some great books. When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn’t all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I’d like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.”
― Jo Walton

“I do not miss my toys. I wouldn't play with them anyway. I am fifteen. I miss my childhood.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I love the train. Sitting here I feel connected to the last time I sat here, and the train to London too. It is in-between, suspended; and in rapid motion towards and away from, it is also poised between. There's a magic in that, not a magic you can work, a magic that's just there, giving a little colour and exhilaration to everything.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I am reading The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much like going on a journey. When I put it down to this, I feel as if I am also waiting with Pippin for the echoes of that stone down the well.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“It's amazing how large the things are that it's possible to overlook.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“It’s lovely when writers I like like each other.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“I'm not sure I ever want to get married. I'm neither messing around while waiting nor looking for some "real thing." What I want is much more complicated. I want somebody I can talk to about books, who would be my friend, and why couldn't we have sex as well if we wanted to? (And used contraception.) I'm not looking for romance. Lord Peter and Harriet would seem a pretty good model to me.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“People tell you to write what you know, but I've found that writing what you know is much harder than making it up. It's easier to research a historical period than your own life, and it's much easier to deal with things that have a little less emotional weight and where you have a little more detachment. It's terrible advice! So this is why you'll find there's no such place as the Welsh valleys, no coal under them, and no red buses running up and down them; there never was such a year as 1979, no such age as fifteen, and no such planet as Earth. The fairies are real, though.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“When I re-read, I know what I'm getting. It's like revisiting an old friend. An unread book holds wonderful unknown promise, but also threatens disappointment. A re-read is a known quantity.”
― Jo Walton, What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction & Fantasy

“I did not buy a book called Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which has the temerity to compare itself, on the front cover, to 'Tolkien at his best.' The back cover attributes the quote to the Washington Post, a newspaper whose quotations will always damn a book for me from now on. How dare they? And how dare the publishers? It isn't a comparison anyone could make, except to say 'Compared to Tolkien at his best, this is dross.' I mean you could say that even about really brilliant books like A Wizard of Earthsea. I expect Lord Foul's Bane (horrible title, sounds like a Conan book) is more like Tolkien at his worst, which would be the beginning of The Simarillion.

The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others