“
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
”
”
Franz Kafka
“
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walden or, Life in the Woods)
“
There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
“
Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
”
”
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
“
I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.
”
”
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
“
I think we ought to live happily ever after.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
I hope your bacon burns.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
Fight because you don't know how to die quietly. Win because you don't know how to lose. This king's ruled long enough—it's time to tear his castle down.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
“
You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers.
”
”
Richard Castle
“
I'm going up to my room now, where I may die.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton
“
You've no right to walk into people's castles and take their guitars.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
A pretty sight, a lady with a book.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle)
“
Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
If I give you a hint and tell you it's a hint, it will be information.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
Have fun storming the castle!
”
”
William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
“
A heart's a heavy burden.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
”
”
Shannon Hale
“
Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great. You have no power over me!
”
”
Jim Henson
“
Really, these wizards! You'd think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?" she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet.
"I'm dying of boredom," Howl said pathetically. "Or maybe just dying.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.
”
”
Franz Kafka (Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization))
“
Typical! I break my neck trying to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up!
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
For so many years I lived in constant terror of myself. Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree. I had been shackled, a prisoner in my own mind.
But finally, finally, I have learned to break free.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
“
If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (The Blue Castle)
“
A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
“
Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
I'm delirious. Spots are crawling before my eyes."
"Those are spiders.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2))
“
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
”
”
Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
“
I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more hair-raising than any storybook made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl.
"And you'll exploit me," Sophie said.
"And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."
"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
It is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Castle)
“
Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
“
My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
The three of them fell silent. After a long pause, Hermione voiced the knottiest question of all in a hesitant voice.
“Do you think we should go and ask Hagrid about it all?”
“That’d be a cheerful visit,” said Ron, “ ‘Hello, Hagrid. Tell us, have you been setting anything mad and hairy loose in the castle lately?
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2))
“
Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2))
“
On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle)
“
I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)
“
I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle)
“
I've got a hangover."
"No, you hit your head on the floor."
"I can't stay. I've got to rescue that fool Sophie.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
So you were going to rescue the Prince! Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?"
"Not likely! I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it!
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
I wonder," she said. "Does this castle have a moat?"
A group of servants were busy emptying the privy buckets into the moat when they were startled by a sudden drawn-out cry. They looked up in time see a scarlet-and-gold clad figure sail out of a first-story window, turn over once and then land with an enormus splash in the dark, rancid waters. They shrugged and went back to work.
”
”
John Flanagan (The Burning Bridge (Ranger's Apprentice, #2))
“
I turned in my seat. Will’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t quite make it out.
‘Just hold on. Just for a minute.’
‘Are you all right?’ I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.
‘I’m fine. I just . . . ’
I could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against it.
‘I don’t want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about . . . ’ He swallowed.
Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.
‘I just . . . want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.’
I released the door handle.
‘Sure.’
I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.
”
”
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
“
One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (The Blue Castle)
“
This isn’t about the Ravens. This is about you. This is about everything it took you to get to this point, everything it cost you, and everyone who laughed when you dared to dream of something big and bright. You’re here tonight because you refused to give up and refused to give in. You’re here where they all said you’d never be, and no one can say you haven’t earned the right to play this game.
“All eyes are on you. It’s time to show them what you’re made of. There’s no room for doubt, no room for second guesses, no room for error. This is your night. This is your game. This is your moment. Seize it with everything you’ve got. Pull out all the stops and lay it all on the line. Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose. This king’s ruled long enough—it’s time to tear his castle down.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
“
Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
”
”
Edward Abbey
“
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle)
“
I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
“
Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
Let me do it right for once,
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
Inside your head you hear a phone ringing
and when you open your eyes
only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.
Inside your head the sound of glass,
a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.
Hello darling, sorry about that.
Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.
Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up
in a stranger’s bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
darkness,
suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.
I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,
smiling in a way
that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,
up the stairs of the building
to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,
I looked out the window and said
This doesn’t look that much different from home,
because it didn’t,
but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—
here’s the pencil, make it work …
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.
Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
years later, in the chlorinated pool.
I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have
these luxuries.
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
”
”
Richard Siken