We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
Lloyd Alexander
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
Perhaps one reason we are fascinated by cats is because such a small animal can contain so much independence, dignity, and freedom of spirit. Unlike the dog, the cat's personality is never bet on a human's. He demands acceptance on his own terms.
I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.
Heroes are people who think more of others than themselves. This is not to say that they don't think of themselves. They do. They certainly do. But they think of others more.
I used the imaginary kingdom not as a sentimentalized fairyland but as an opening wedge to express what I hoped would be some very hard truths.
I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.
From as far back as I can remember, I always loved the King Arthur stories, fairy tales, mythology - things like that. So it was very natural for me when I came to write the 'Prydain' books to sort of follow that direction.
I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out... On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.
King Arthur was one of my heroes - I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield and my uncle's cane for the sword Excalibur.
Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.
After high school, I worked as a messenger boy at a local bank. I was miserable. I felt like Robin Hood chained in the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon. As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract and had to count on my fingers.
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.
My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.
My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.
I loved all the world's mythologies.
After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.
It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.
Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.
When I was discharged, I attended the University of Paris and met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine. We soon married and eventually returned to the States.
After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.
Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.
My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.
All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.
There's this huge number of desperate people.
I guess there's only two possible places ideas can come from. One is the outside: everything that happens to you and everything that you do in life. And the other is the inside part: your own personality and imagination, and no two people are alike, like fingerprints.
Writing has got to be some of the hardest work I know.
I had always been interested in mythology. I suppose my brief stay in Wales during World War II influenced my writing, too. It was an amazing country. It has marvelous castles and scenery.
Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They're always with us. We just sort of accumulate them.
I didn't know if I'd be good with children. Actually talking with them, I mean. But I am good with them.
I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.
Oh, my parents never cracked a book, just newspapers.
There's a kind of funny gap between 14 and 20 when young people don't read very much. Nobody really knows what to do about it, although we've tried to reach these dropout readers with the 'young adult' book.
Children's literature is as valid an art form as any other.
Talented people are finding that writing for young people is as demanding of high quality as writing for adults.
Classical heroes are usually much larger than life. They're not quite human beings. They're somehow larger than human scale.
King Arthur was one of my heroes because he was such a marvelous, heroic, courageous, and magnificent person that I had to admire him even though I knew perfectly well that I could never be in any way like that.
My imagination can do whatever it wants to do. This gives me a great sense of freedom.
In whatever guise - our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death - the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love, and mercy is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.
I first wrote for adults, but when I started writing for young people, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life. I was able to express my own deepest feelings far more than I ever could when writing for adults.
I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.
