Eva Ibbotson Quotes & Sayings

He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector — Eva Ibbotson

It is a fearful thing to love what time can touch. — Eva Ibbotson

Daisy offered a mosquito which bit you and gave you yellow fever. 'You turn as yellow as a lemon and then you die,' she said. — Eva Ibbotson

People make their own worlds. — Eva Ibbotson

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls. — Eva Ibbotson

Ms. Wrack's mother, Mrs. Wrack, had been a mermaid: a proper one who lived on a rock and combed her hair and sang. But sailors had never been lured to their doom by her, partly because she looked like the back of a bus and partly because modern ships are so high out of the water that they never even saw her — Eva Ibbotson

Duty exists and it's real. It means sharing any gift or talent that you have with people who need it. It means not being afraid or selfish or tight - but open. — Eva Ibbotson

People who've suffered don't have time to grumble. — Eva Ibbotson

One of the sisters started shaving her legs and marrying tax inspectors, so she was no good. — Eva Ibbotson

Adventures, once they were over, were things that had to stay inside one
that no one else could quite understand. — Eva Ibbotson

I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth — Eva Ibbotson

-they were still practicing the fiendishly difficult pattern at the end of the act where the diagonal lines of swans cross over and dissolve to form three groups: unequal groups, since the number seventeen is notoriously difficult to divide by three. — Eva Ibbotson

For an instant she felt his touch on her cheek then he stepped back. There that was my ration for all eternity. People have died for less I dare say. — Eva Ibbotson

It was only when the light in her eyes was extinguished, at the mention of her father, that Rupert realized how brightly it had burned. — Eva Ibbotson

Once the hag got upset she was apt to go downhill very fast and remember things like she was an orphan. People are often orphans when they are eighty-two, but it is true that when you have no mother or father you can feel very lonely at any age. — Eva Ibbotson

Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it. — Eva Ibbotson

And after all, it wasn't her fault that she was an idiot and had two ridiculous children. Life isn't fair and never has been. — Eva Ibbotson

Yet for a moment it seemed to him that the men who had dragged marble from Italy and porphyry from Portugal, who had ransacked the jungle for its rarest woods and paid their millions to build this opulent and fantastical theatre, had done so in order that a young girl with loose brown hair should move across its stage, drawing her future from its empty air. — Eva Ibbotson

What are you afraid of then?
Not Being able to see, I think not seeing because your obsessed by something that blots out the world. — Eva Ibbotson

One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda — Eva Ibbotson

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence ... they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good ... — Eva Ibbotson

Dostoyevsky was her brother, Victorian children's books her passion and though she lived, when in funds, mainly on avocado pears, she took her bath each night with a different cookery book. — Eva Ibbotson

The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake. — Eva Ibbotson

To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected. — Eva Ibbotson

After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister, and she wouldn't be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster. — Eva Ibbotson

uhhfdbfdngrsdjhgj,hv.kugj,fhmtdneg&vad&gnfcigh-lhklulvzbhkn — Eva Ibbotson

I think I ought to cut my hair off," said Maia, one morning, as she tore yet another tooth out of Finn's comb.
"No. That's a bad idea."
Maia looked up, surprised. "But you wanted Clovis to cut his hair."
"That was different. — Eva Ibbotson

We've been together for thirty-five years," Alec had said. "We've no call to change now. — Eva Ibbotson

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then:
"Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up! — Eva Ibbotson

When you're sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It's always better underneath the open sky. — Eva Ibbotson

He then kissed her.
It was a very long time before he let her go. When he did, she looked up at him, hurt and bewilderment on her face.
"Why did you stop?" asked Tessa.
"I thought you might want to breathe," said Guy carefully.
"Breathe?" said Tessa, shocked. "I don't need to breathe when I'm with you. — Eva Ibbotson

And lying there, her hair in damp strands across her crumpled face, Harriet gave up the long, long struggle to love her father and her aunt.
It was for this loss above all that she wept. She had learned, during the long years of her childhood, to live without receiving love. To live without giving it seemed more than she could bear. — Eva Ibbotson

How dare you suppose that I don't know who you are or what you are? That I don't understand what I see? Do you take me for some kind of besotted schoolboy? It is unspeakable! You could weigh as much as a hippopotamus and shave your head and wear a wig and it wouldn't make a difference to me. I never said you were beautiful. I never thought it. I said that you were you. — Eva Ibbotson

Do I know everything about him already? she thought, bewildered. And back came the answer: Everything. You are branded with this knowledge, you will have it for the rest of time. — Eva Ibbotson

For whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage may find themselves in paradise. — Eva Ibbotson

Do you think there'll be someone in the Xanti who'll remember your mother?"
Finn blew on the embers. "I don't know. We may not find the Xanti," he warned her.
Maia shrugged. "It doesn't matter. But if we do, will they accept me? I don't have any Indian blood."
"If they don't, we won't stay. I wouldn't let anything happen to you. I've got my gun."
"I'm not scared," said Maia. And she wasn't. She'd been scared of the nastiness of the twins and of being shut up in the Carters' bungalow, but she wasn't scared of traveling through unknown lands with a boy hardly older than she was herself. She thought perhaps she wouldn't be scared of anything ever again if she was with Finn. — Eva Ibbotson

It is for England that one marries,' she said. 'For the land. — Eva Ibbotson

It was too much ... the gods would not permit such joy. — Eva Ibbotson

We mustn't only remember the good bits," she said. "We must remember the bad bits, too, so that we know it was real. — Eva Ibbotson

Happiness is almost as good as magic for altering a person's looks. — Eva Ibbotson

It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them. — Eva Ibbotson

I wish I could find him again." And then: "I will find him again. If they don't send me away."
"They won't send you away," said Miss Minton. Mrs. Carter was already waiting greedily for the next month's allowance for Maia from the bank in Manaus. "However, it seems to me we must find a way of getting you out of doors." She wrinkled her formidable forehead. "I think a disease might be best. Yes. Something that makes it necessary for you to go out and breathe fresh air. Even damp air. Let me think. What about pulmonary spasms?"
Maia stared at her. "I've never heard of them."
"Well, no. I've just made them up. — Eva Ibbotson

It was a lovely church - one of those places which look as though God might be about to give a marvellous party. — Eva Ibbotson

What are you afraid of then?'
She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking of quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts.
'Not being able to see, I think,' she said.
'Being blind, you mean?'
'No, not that. That would be terrible hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania of belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face on some man. — Eva Ibbotson

One can always bear what is right. — Eva Ibbotson

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe. — Eva Ibbotson

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies.
'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika. — Eva Ibbotson

But she had to know words. She had to know everything. — Eva Ibbotson

This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her. — Eva Ibbotson

If this is the 'Green Hell' of the Amazon, then hell is where I belong," said Maia. — Eva Ibbotson

I must go
the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but
" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at
" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else ... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?"
Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded.
"Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that. — Eva Ibbotson

Not a frog, I hope?" he asked ... She shook her head. "No. And if it was I wouldn't kiss it, I promise you. I might kiss a prince if I could be sure he'd turn into a frog, but not the other way around. — Eva Ibbotson

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose] ... — Eva Ibbotson

Well wtith a statue hermann cannot possibly fight — Eva Ibbotson

And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that. — Eva Ibbotson

[Tessa] knew about phantom limbs [....] Her cheek, where the Englishman's fingers had been, did not exactly ache ... but very strangely, most curiously ... it felt. — Eva Ibbotson

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something. — Eva Ibbotson

Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just so often that they were dead, and in a book. — Eva Ibbotson

She wanted to make him swear; to have a kind of ceremony
but then she saw his face as he looked out over the Island and saw that he loved it as she did, and she knew for certain they would both be back. — Eva Ibbotson

The world was so beautiful in those days, Annika. The music, the flowers, the scent of pines ... "
"It still is," said Annika. "Honestly, it still is. — Eva Ibbotson

Finn wanted to collect the plants he knew he could sell, and he was teaching Maia. He climbed to the top of the leaf canopy and came back with clusters of yellow fruits which could be boiled up to treat skin diseases. He found a tree whose leaves were made into an infusion to help people with kidney complaints and brought back a silvery fern to rub on aching muscles. Most of these plants had Indian names, but as they sorted their specimens and put them to be dried and stored in labeled cotton bags, Maia learned quickly.
"You'd be amazed how much money people give for these in the towns," said Finn.
But not everything he collected was for sale. He restocked his own medicine chest also. And every day he bullied Maia about taking her quinine pills.
"Only idiots get malaria in the dry season," he said. — Eva Ibbotson

The interview took place in Miss Banks' private sitting room while Maia waited in the hall, and as soon as she saw Mr. Murray's face, Miss Minton knew there was no hope. She would not even be allowed to look after Maia during the holidays. She was in complete disgrace.
Miss Minton had spent the night with her sister and bought another corset, because the good times were gone. — Eva Ibbotson

As he clambered back and picked up the paddle, he was still muttering furiously in his own language and glaring at her. Without deciphering a single word, she knew he was scolding her for her carelessness, trying to explain that one had to be alert the whole time in the jungle.
"Idiota!" he said finally, and though Senhor and Senhora Olvidares in the phrase book had not used the word, Maia understood it well enough. — Eva Ibbotson

She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee.
"Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen.
"Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee."
"That seems sensible," said Ellen. — Eva Ibbotson

That's silly, Anna," said the Honorable Olive. "Being afraid is silly, you know it is. — Eva Ibbotson

And when Finn complained at the end of a day that they had not come very far, she said, "What does it matter? We've got all the time in the world."
Which is not always a clever thing to say. — Eva Ibbotson

They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?'
'It was books, admitted Miss Minton.
And Maia said, 'Good. — Eva Ibbotson

Shadows are cool and peaceful places for those whose minds are overstocked with treasure. — Eva Ibbotson

Anyone who has an egg to watch over has a stake in the future, and the future
they were sure of it
was going to be good. — Eva Ibbotson

But of course he knew, all of them knew. There is only one kind of a person a wizard can marry, and that is a witch. — Eva Ibbotson

Stupid women were lured into it and assured they would become young and beautiful if they let themselves be pummeled and pounded and smeared with sticky creams, and have their faces lifted and their stomachs flattened. They paid a lot of money to Madame Olympia, who would put a little bit of magic into the creams and ointments that she used so that at first they did look marvelous. But it was the kind of magic that wore off very quickly, leaving the women even uglier than before so that they would rush back to her and pay her more money and the whole thing would start again. — Eva Ibbotson

For the first part of the journey Maia kept her eyes on the side of the road. Now that she was really leaving her friends it was hard to hold back her tears.
She had reached the gulping stage when she heard a loud snapping noise and turned her head. Miss Minton had opened the metal clasp of her large black handbag and was handing her a clean handkerchief, embroidered with the initial A.
"Myself," said the governess in her deep gruff voice, "I would think how lucky I was. How fortunate."
"To go to the Amazon, you mean?"
"To have so many friends who were sad to see me go."
"Didn't you have friends who minded you leaving?"
Miss Minton's thin lips twitched for a moment.
"My sister's canary, perhaps. If he had understood what was happening. Which is extremely doubtful. — Eva Ibbotson

You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair. — Eva Ibbotson

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music. — Eva Ibbotson

Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.'
She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall. — Eva Ibbotson

I would let her ... have adventures. I would let her ... choose her path. It would be hard ... it was hard ... but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one's teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. THe place was for her - and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus, and three girls died. CHildren are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets
" She broke off, gathering her thoughts. "When she was traveling and exploring ... and finding her songs, Maia wasn't just happy, she was ... herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it healed. Perhaps I'm mad
and the professor too
but I think children must lead big lives ... if it is in them to do so. — Eva Ibbotson