# Quote — Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

> Dear Polly,
>
> Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair.
>
> This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can.
>
> Yours ever, Sam.

- Author: [Diana Wynne Jones](https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones.md)
- Book: [Fire and Hemlock](https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones/fire-and-hemlock.md)
- Page: 265
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Diana_Wynne_Jones#Fire_and_Hemlock_(1985)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones/fire-and-hemlock/dear-polly-tom

## More from this book

> To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.

p. 392 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones/fire-and-hemlock/to-love-someone.md)

> "Heroes see things like that," he said.
>
> "It's obviously an enchantment of some kind," Polly agreed, humouring him.
>
> "It must be," he said. It sounded as if he was humouring her.

p. 34 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones/fire-and-hemlock/heroes-see-things.md)

> Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.

p. 29 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/diana-wynne-jones/fire-and-hemlock/pretending-was-like.md)