Alan Garner Quotes

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

I loathe crowds. I especially dont like cities. A city involves biomass. And biomass gets to me.

Im not supposed to be within two hundred feet of a school or a Chuck E. Cheese.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

I wish Monkeys could Skype. Maybe one day.

It's where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this. Plus it's not a purse, it's called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.

I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

I learnt that I must never finish a book with nothing else to do.

Hitting the gym to release stress is not nearly as effective as hitting the people that cause the stress to begin with.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.

My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

Ive learned never to try and force words to come.

My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read Boneland.

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

When a monkey nibbles on a weenis, it's funny in any language.

I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.