I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn’t have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn’t exist without imagination. And so anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certainly...

The dear girl, I fear, may be contemplating some alarming, disruptive perhaps dangerous project. In which case, I would naturally do all in my power to keep her from any such rash or foolhardy enterprise...

Count the deed, not the thought.

Each day of war takes us farther from all we could hope to be or do. We gain nothing but heartbreak, and lose everything we cherish. Our lives erode and diminish, our children see no...

I loved all the world’s mythologies.

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

Who but lovers dream alike?

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.

The vitality of art is its capacity for infinite expansion. One form doesn’t preclude another any more than the existence of Mozart makes the existence of Bach superfluous.

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

No, no,” said Taran slowly, “It would be folly to think of attacking them.” He smiled quickly at Fflewddur. “The bards would sing of us,” he admitted, “but we’d be in no position to appreciate...

In an age that seems to be increasingly dehumanized, when people can be transformed into non-persons, and where a great deal of our adult art seems to diminish our lives rather than add to them,...

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

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

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

The journey is the treasure.

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

You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled. Is not the emptiness of the bowl what makes it useful? As for laws, a parrot can repeat...

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...

We are beginning to learn that intangibles have more specific gravity than we suspected, that ideas can generate as much forward thrust as Atlas missiles. We may win a victory in exploring the infinities of...

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

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

It is true. Indeed, that is why I dared not speak. I have yearned to be again at the side of my beloved Arianllyn, and my thoughts are with her now. But had I chosen...

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

We don’t need to have just one favorite. We keep adding favorites. Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives...

Surely you can entrust your task to your friends.” “No,” said Taran, after a long pause, “I have taken it on myself through my own choice.””If that is so,” answered Medwyn, “then you can give...

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

Children may not understand all that’s happening below the surface of a story. It doesn’t matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there’s something more than...

After seven years of writing – and working many jobs to support my family – I finally got published.

A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin’s face. ‘There are those,’ he said gently, ‘who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you...

I shall not lie!” Eilonwy cried, “not for this traitor and deserter.” “It is not for him,” Taran said quietly, “but for the sake of our quest.” “It isn’t right,” Eilonwy began, tears starting in...

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

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.

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

But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging.

It is strange,’ he said at last. ‘I had longed to enter the world of men. Now I see it filled with sorrow, with cruelty and treachery, with those who would destroy all around them.’...

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

He will not succeed in this,” Taran said. “Somehow, we must find a way to escape. We dare not lose hope.” “I agree absolutely,” Fflewddur answered. “Your general idea is excellent; it’s only the details...

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

Gwydion stood as a wolf at bay, his green eyes glittering, his teeth bared.

I think we should always remember that reading — the experience of a book — is a very private, very personal kind of thing. Sometimes the best response to such an experience is: silence.

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

Keep out of this,” Lucian said. “I’m not smiting anybody.””You’re showing mercy.” Catch-a-Tick nodded. “That’s heroic, too. But not as good as smiting.

I can’t make sense out of that girl,” he said to the bard, “Can you?” “Never mind,” Fflewddur said, “We aren’t really expected to.

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

“He loved her…It was noble of him. It was beautiful.”-“It was stupid.

Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them. She understands...

The ocean filled the footprints where a boy and cat had stood.

There is an exuberance in good fantasy quite unlike the most exalted moments of realistic fiction. Both forms have similar goals; but realism walks where fantasy dances.

Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.