Jill Paton Walsh > Quotes

“The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales.”
― Jill Paton Walsh

“Bunter came with me in the role of a friend. A role he has always played to perfection."
"It does not require dissimulation, my lord," said Bunter.
"Thank you," said Peter.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Attenbury Emeralds

“Harriet said, "You shouldn't have reminded me to sign that book, Peter."
"Why ever not? Have you suddenly become bashful about your hard-earned glories?"
"Because it watn's hers," said Harriet. "It was a library copy."
"Stroke of luck for the ratepaers of the City of Westminster," he said, grinning.”
― Jill Paton Walsh

“It’s just that we wear rose-coloured spectacles when we return here [to Oxford] – we are dazzled by the foolish idealism of our youthful years.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“And may God better understand and love us, than we, in our weakness, can do him.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, A Parcel of Patterns

“In the beginning the word was with God; all explanations, physical and moral, rested on the divine. And now for storytellers, even though those patterns of explanation are strictly human, the word has not lost a superhuman power to connect young and old, writer and reader; to connect us with each other and with the causes and consequences of what we do.”
― Jill Patton Walsh

“allowed themselves to reinhabit themselves”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“One of my colleagues in Birmingham University, where I come from,’ said Trevair, ‘is a moral philosopher. He taught me that one of the ways to judge a course of action is to consider what company it puts one in. I doubt if that’s very good philosophy, but I find it a good rule of thumb.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“But when those great words roll over us—man that is born of a woman hath but a short time; all flesh is as grass; the places where he was known shall see him no more—I always want to rush off and drink champagne, or dance all night, or hear an opera.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, A Presumption of Death

“If you tell someone a secret, and ask them to keep it secret, you are asking them to display a discretion you are unable to display yourself.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Attenbury Emeralds

“It's amazing […] how perfectly honest people who would starve rather than steal sixpence, will steal books without compunction.”
― Jill Paton Walsh

“It’s the Queen’s English now,’ observed Peter mildly.

‘Is there a difference?’ asked Oundle rhetorically. ‘I fervently hope not.’

‘There will be in time,’ said Peter.

‘That will be deplorable,’ replied Oudle. ‘I shall not myself deviate by a syllable from correct usage.’

‘My language is foul, and yours is Fowler?’ said Peter, and added one of his sudden quirky smiles, ‘or know your Onions.’

This quip crossed the barrier of the table, because the man sitting nearly opposite Peter laughed.

‘Onions?’ said Oudle.

‘C.T. Onions, I imagine,’ said the man opposite. ‘Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Oudle. ‘Very droll.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“Where there’s a will there’s relations. Misquoted from the Book of Proverbs”
― Jill Paton Walsh, A Presumption of Death

“She loved the sound of the piano being played in another room, the sense of the house shared with music.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, A Presumption of Death

“Clever readers, of course, would already have seen through the entire thing, and for them the ending would lack surprise. But Harriet knew from experience that the pleasures of having guessed it all, with the concomitant pleasure of feeling clever, would make up for that as long as matters were not humiliatingly easy to guess.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Attenbury Emeralds

“Granted, a man may smile and smile and be a villain, but it takes nerve.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Attenbury Emeralds

“Peter, leaving the library with a light step, and skipping down the stairs like an elderly Fred Astaire.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“[A]fter all, the position of a reader in a book is very like that occupied by angels in the world, when angels still had any credibility. Yours is, like theirs, a hovering, gravely attentive presence, observing everything, from whom nothing is concealed, for angels are very bright mirrors. Hearts and minds are as open as the landscape to their view, as to yours; like them you are in the fabled world invisible.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, Knowledge of Angels

“Serial murder is very uncommon, Peter,’ said Charles. ‘But the major”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar

“We all know pretty well that something we value is threatened, but when we try to say what, we’re left with a bunch of big words like justice, freedom, honour, truth and so on, that embarrass us, because they’ve been misused so often they sound like platform claptrap.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, A Presumption of Death

“Well, there is a bothersome ethical problem with a proper trial involving a control group, and blind testing. If something looks effective – say it seems to be slowing the growth of tumours – then everyone wants to abandon the trial and give the thing to the control group as well. It seems wicked to withhold it just because of a scientific quibble.’ ‘So the trial is suspended incomplete?’ ‘And then nobody knows exactly where we are. A lot of medical procedure is like that too. Never properly verified. But people love certainty – so dramatic, so newsworthy. The qualified truth, full of ifs and buts and as far as we know so far, is so relatively boring.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Bad Quarto

“Meanwhile, we stooped and picked the sharp plants,”
― Jill Paton Walsh, The Green Book

“...my eyes were very large and glassy-dark, so that I thought I might see tiny fishes and anemones in them, like brown rockpools.”
― Jill Paton Walsh, Grace