Quotes from Pamela Dean

Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.

I wholeheartedly rejected anything remotely feminine but was not enthusiastic about anything masculine, either. I did not want to cook and have babies, and I did not want to be an engineer or a baseball player or a soldier or a politician or any of the myriad careers open mostly or solely to men. I wanted to be a poet.

I was a weird but definite kid, and there were essentially no gender roles for me to fit into.

Truthfully, the person with whom I identified most in Heinlein's early works was Rhysling in 'The Green Hills of Earth.'

I did always think of Heinlein as a strict rationalist, although a dispassionate examination of his works doesn't support that.

Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?

It did occur to me that the effect of good literature may be as dizzying as that of alcohol.

Why do all your friends talk like books?

At the moment, if you asked me, I would say that this book is about keeping the heart of flesh in a world that wants to put in a heart of stone; and about how, regardless of the accusations regularly flung at them from all quarters, learning and literature can help their adherents accomplish that.

Do you want some of this cheese, or shall we just go walking?

So he decided he would never listen to anybody he knew? That's just like someone in a fairy tale.' Knowing he had given his trust amiss, how could he bestow it again?' That's foolish. Did he expect never to make any mistakes?

I was testing a hypothesis. But it was right, and then I had a unicorn to deal with. You can't just say, 'Thank you so much, go away now' to a unicorn, the way you can with atomic particles.

Seeming and knowing made hideous faces at one another across the breadth of her mind.

My feeling says there is history here. But sometimes a thing might feel true to me, not because it is, but because the writer believes it is.

Arry thought her mind must be tired. It would not, in a sensible fashion, lie down and rest.

Their shadows sported over the hills like cats, chasing the sunlight over sparkling granite and dull slate, the bright dry grass and the small hidden gleams of water.

Peg was involved in a common form of senior-year panic that caused its victims to exhibit permanent distraction and to take up residence in the library.

The wind pounced on them hard. It had blown some of the cloud away and stretched the rest across the sky like rags on a loom to make a rug. A blue and white and gray rug like that would b pretty, thought Arry. But how do I know that? Do I know it?

So easily she broke her word. The fire did not cower down nor the wind rise; her heart beat on quietly. Maybe it was more like a disease than an injury: the seed was sown but not yet sprouted. Perjury, shapeshifting: which was more mortal?

It's worse than treachery. He's using force. Is that worse than guile?