Quotes from Lloyd Alexander

Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.

I can't imagine why knowledge, truth and love should be so much of a secret

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.

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.

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.

Oh, my parents never cracked a book, just newspapers.

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.

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.

Children's literature is as valid an art form as any other.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

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.

The vitality of art is its capacity for infinite expansion. One form doesn't preclude another any more than the existence of Mozart makes the existence of Bach superfluous.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.

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

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