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
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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 Westmins . . . Read more

-Jill Paton Walsh
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 . . . Read more

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

-Jill Paton Walsh
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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
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Granted, a man may smile and smile and be a villain, but it takes nerve.

-Jill Paton Walsh
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[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 mir . . . Read more

-Jill Paton Walsh
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
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