Top 155 Quotes & Sayings by Lloyd Alexander
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Lloyd Alexander.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.
I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.
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.
If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.
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.
Children's literature is as valid an art form as any other.
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.
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.
I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.
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 didn't know if I'd be good with children. Actually talking with them, I mean. But I am good with them.
I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.
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.
My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
I loved all the world's mythologies.
We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.
Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.
All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
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.
Talented people are finding that writing for young people is as demanding of high quality as writing for adults.
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 decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.
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.
There's this huge number of desperate people.
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 imagination can do whatever it wants to do. This gives me a great sense of freedom.
My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.
Classical heroes are usually much larger than life. They're not quite human beings. They're somehow larger than human scale.
My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.
Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.
After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.
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.
Writing has got to be some of the hardest work I know.
It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Seize the day, whatever's in it to seize, before something comes along and seizes you.
Once you have courage to look upon evil, seeing it for what it is and naming it by its true name, it is powerless against you, and you can destroy it.
The point is not to look back, but to look ahead to what you hope still to do.
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.
True allegiance is only given willingly.
Thinking is a bit uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. A matter of time and practice.
Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?
Behind one truth there is always yet another.
Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.
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.
If you want truth you should begin by giving it.
Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.
...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?
Count the deed, not the thought.
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.
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.
Neither refuse to give help when it is needed,... nor refuse to accept it when it is offered.
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