Celebrate Diana Wynne Jones!

Sophie reads to me quite often. I like the kind of story with puzzles in, where you have to guess who did the murder. Have you any of those in here?

But they do come round, more than once, the times when humanity just sits there and says “Oh no!” to anything new. The “Oh no” party is always with us. You can hear them now in the people who refuse to admit that the climate might be changing. They say, “It’s just a blip in the weather,” or “The scientists are being alarmist,” or simply and complacently, “God will provide. We’re okay.” And it really is important not to listen to them, just as it always was. Someone somewhere undoubtedly has the right hidden gift to cope with the coming conditions, but he/she has not recognized it yet. That person could be you. Or if it’s not your hidden gifts that are needed this time, they might be just right for the next time. So please don’t disregard any of the strange notions that come into your heads. They are certainly prompted by your hidden gifts. Just remember how incredibly gifted all human beings are.

When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject - at Ieast, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away. At any rate, within two weeks he succeeded in reducing his substantial audience to myself and four others. We stuck on, despite his efforts. He worked at it: when it did appear that we might be hearing what he said, it was his custom to turn round and address the blackboard.

Why am I holding a dog full of angels?

She knew there was a rule about not running in the
corridors, but she was not sure it applied to people without bodies.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that you must have at least some emotional connection with every soul that figures in a story. You may like them, love them, find them disgusting, or hate them, but you must react to them in some way. You must see them as real and treat them with the same respect you would accord someone you meet in the street. Only then can they take on any life of their own. And they do. I always love it when people I know I have invented start behaving unexpectedly, as real people do - being themselves, in fact.

It is all very well my books start coming true on me - it is a risk I take - but when this starts rubbing off on other people it is no joke. The trouble is, a book demands that certain incidents are present in it, and to deny this is to spoil the book. So I thought deeply about the matter. And though I realized I could do nothing about parts of my books coming true - that really is beyond my control - there are things very much in my control over which I feel a very strong sense of responsibility over.

‘Is it a new thought then, to say: keep on, there’s always hope? I thought that was a very old saying.’

‘Yes, but you’re the first person I’ve met who’s still saying it when he’s dead. That has to be new.’

There are no rules. Only principles and natural laws.