Lloyd Alexander Quotes

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.

Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains.

Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

He [the cat] liked to peep into the refrigerator and risk having his head shut in by the closing door. He also climbed to the top of the stove, discontinuing the practice after he singed his tail.

The only thing a cat worries about is what's happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.

Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?

Seize the day, whatever's in it to seize, before something comes along and seizes you.

Thinking is a bit uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. A matter of time and practice.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

She had no particular breed in mind, no unusual requirements. Except the special sense of mutual recognition that tells dog and human they have both come to the right place.

Hope is an essential thread in the fabric of all fantasies, an Ariadne's thread to guide us out of the labyrinth ... Human beings have always needed hope, and surely now more than ever.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

Neither refuse to give help when it is needed,... nor refuse to accept it when it is offered.

Fantasy is, I believe, the great nourisher of imagination. To paraphrase Einstein on how to develop intelligence in young people: Read fairy tales. Then read more fairy tales.

For man to be worthy of any rank, he must strive first to be a man.

The journey is the treasure.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

If we nourish imagination, we nourish everything else.

You have a point," said Fronto, "and even a poet must occasionally bow to logic.

We hold each other's lives in our open hands, not in clenched fists.

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.

If you want truth you should begin by giving it.

The point is not to look back, but to look ahead to what you hope still to do.

Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.

I'm convinced that imagination is at the heart of everything we do - in art, science, even astrophysics and higher mathematics. Imagination leads us to ask, "What if?"

Two cats can live as cheaply as one, and their owner has twice as much fun

Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.

Count the deed, not the thought.

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.

True allegiance is only given willingly.

Ever since human beings learned to talk to each other, we've been fascinated with storytelling of every kind. Blessed (or cursed) with insatiable curiosity, we have to know what happens next.

A taste for adventure is by no means a masculine monopoly.

What you may seek and what you may find are not always one.

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.

Forgive me....I called you an idiot. I spoke too hastily. You are not. Had I given it more thought, I would have called you a scoundrel.

Who but lovers dream alike?

That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood.

Do you not believe that animals know grief and fear and pain? The world of men is not an easy one for them.

Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don't forget to put out your nets!

She has given you something of value: the truth in her heart.

If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?

Find what you want. I will find you.

And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain.