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.

...Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?

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.

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

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

If the pull of the outside world is strong, there is also a pull towards the human. The cat may disappear on its own errands, but sooner or later, it returns once again for a little while, to greet us with its own type of love.

Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.

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

I only suggest to you: Will you dwell on killing this man? You wish for revenge? If you do, he has already killed you by slow poison. So, let it go. Why waste your time? His life will see to his death.

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 does that, can help us for the rest of our lives.

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

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.

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.

Fantasy, in addition to being great storytelling, moves us at some unique and profound level. It has, I think, the power of mythology, or ancient dreams we have always and forever shared. In it, we find our real world and our real selves.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

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

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

The journey is the treasure.

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

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

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

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

If you want truth you should begin by giving it.

If we nourish imagination, we nourish everything else.

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.

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.

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?"

Most cats do not approach humans recklessly. The possibility of concealed weapons, clods or sticks, tend to make them reserved. Homeless cats in particular-with some justification, unfortunately-consider humans their natural enemies. Much ceremony must be observed, and a number of diplomatic feelers put out, before establishing a state of truce.

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

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 – unless she wished me to accompany her.

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

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.

Count the deed, not the thought.

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.

This much have I learned: A man's life weighs more than glory, and a price paid in blood is a heavy reckoning.

A crown is a pitiless master, harsher than the staff of a pig-keeper; while a staff bears up, a crown weighs down, beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.

-I'm trying to make myself invisible. -That's an odd thing to attempt.