Jo Walton Quotes

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.

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

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

There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.

If the purpose of literature is to illuminate human nature, the purpose of fantastic literature is to do that from a wider perspective. You can say different things about what it means to be human if you can contrast that to what it means to be a robot, or an alien, or an elf.

Peace means something different from 'not fighting'. Those aren't peace advocates, they're 'stop fighting' advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.

I've always thought fairies are like mushrooms, you trip over them when you're not thinking about them, but they're hard to spot when you're searching for them.

Bibliotropic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotropic, they naturally turn towards the sun. We naturally turn towards the bookshop.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.

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.

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.

Avan was as religious as the next young dragon with his way to make in the world-which is to say that he held many traditional beliefs which he had never paused to examine, attended church because it would have seemed strange not to, rarely paid much attention when he was there, and found piety out of the pulpit thoroughly misplaced.

What you can't pay back you pay forward.

I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.

Magic isn't inherently evil. But it does seem to be terribly bad for people.

You can't do magic with books unless they're very special copies.

It's amazing how large the things are that it's possible to overlook.

There may be stranger reasons for being alive. There are books There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.

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.

I do not miss my toys. I wouldn't play with them anyway. I am fifteen. I miss my childhood.

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.

You know, class is like magic. There's nothing there you can point to, it evaporates if you try to analyse it, but it's real and it affects how people behave and makes things happen.

It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.

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.

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.