Lloyd Alexander

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

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

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

I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.

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'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.

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.

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.

Talented people are finding that writing for young people is as demanding of high quality as writing for adults.

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.