Quotes from Lloyd Alexander

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.

If you made mistakes, you recognize them. As I told you, there are times when the seeking counts more than the finding.

Nothing we do is ever done entirely alone. There is a part of us in everyone else

This is meant to be a serious tale- in the way that all humor is serious and all fantasy is true- and if there is no conventionally happy ending in fairy-tale terms, there is still a most hopeful ending in human terms

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

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

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.

If life is a loom, the pattern you weave is not so easily unraveled.

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

Writing has got to be some of the hardest work I know.

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.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

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.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

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.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

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

Behind one truth there is always yet another.

There is truth in all things, if you understand them well.

In the race of men is much greed and envy; but of truth, little.

What seems to be love beyond any question is usually a simple case of indigestion.

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.

Classical heroes are usually much larger than life. They're not quite human beings. They're somehow larger than human scale.