Jo Walton Quotes

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

There's a way that money is freedom, but it isn't money, it's that money stands for having a choice.

She felt her strong young body that she had never appreciated when she had it, constantly worrying that she didn't meet standards of beauty and not understanding how standards of health were so much more important.

magic can make things happen before you do it. It can make things have happened.

what's real within the story is real within the story

My mother was a pathetic patchwork witch who had used magic so much to meddle in her own life that she had no integrity left and was nothing but a coil of hatreds consuming themselves in futility. We had already hedged her power, with the help of the fairies.

the knowledge that change can be frightening, that responsibility can, but that the answer to that is not refusing to change or to accept responsibility.

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.

On the one hand, Gramma and Grampar never mentioned sex at all. They must have done it, or they wouldn’t have had Auntie Teg and my mother, but I don’t think they did it more than twice. Then there’s the way they talk about sex in school and in church. 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.

You couldn’t get worse food, or food more detached from nature, if you tried. If you have an apple, you’re connected to an apple tree. If you have a dish of set custard and half a glace cherry you’re not connected to anything.

The thing with dying, well, with death really, is that there's a difference between being someone who knows they can really die at any time and someone who doesn't.