Quotes from Alan Garner

Because of my nature, I find 'spiritual' and 'creative' to be synonymous. I am not exclusively a Christian; but for me work is prayer. So in pleading for the nurture of creativity, in life and in education, I plead for the nuture of the spiritual. I cannot separate the two.

From my differing awareness, I sense something you may not yet. Especially among artists...resistance is growing. Conciousness is on the move. Something is at work in the world: a general recognition of the crisis of the spirit, of the banal and shoddy, in human affairs. It is universal and it must be met. Recently, an Australian Aboriginal shaman warned me: 'The Great Serpent has woken. Jarapiri stirs. The earth shakes. And the warriors are gathering.

She was tall. Her long hair fell to her waist, framing in gold her pale and lovely face. Her eyes were blue. She wore a loose gown of white cambric, embroidered with living green stems of broom and meadowsweet, and a wreath of green oak leaves in here hair.

As I turned toward writing, which is partially intellectual in its function, but is primarily intuitive and emotional in its execution, I turned towards that which was numinous and emotional in me, and that was the legend of King Arthur Asleep Under the Hill. It stood for all that I'd had to give up in order to understand what I'd had to give up.

Theer's no use saying pigs conner fly, when you see them catching swallows.

Them as can't bend, like as not they break.

Wisdom wins where might fails.

She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she is often longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns.

What do I know?' said Huw, and Gwyn was frightened by the fear in Huw's eyes. 'What do I know?... I know more than I know... I don't know what I know... The weight, the weight of it!

They're better tactics than mine." "Heart and head, John. They should know each other. Yours have never met.

We have to tell stories to unriddle the world

Despite our daily observations to the contrary, I assure you that children are, by nature, spiritual beings, until we destroy through our example. In my own field of language I remember, and still can see, there being no problem here. A child knows, whether it be in the traditional structure of a fairy tale, or the special use of an archaism, when Mystery is engaged.

At the end of day, he looked out and saw that they were safe under ravens.

Treacle Walker? Me know that pickthank psychopomp? I know him, so I do. I know him. Him with his pots for rags and his bag and his bone and his doddering nag and nookshotten cart and catchpenny oddments. Treacle Walker? I'd not trust that one's arse with a fart.

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can't be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.

I wanted us to have a holiday, not a ruddy breakdown.

I hope there isn't,' [a final answer] said Colin. "I'm for uncertainty. As soon as you think you know, you're done for. You don't listen and you can't hear. If you're certain of anything, you shut the door on the possibility of revelation, of discovery. You can think. You can believe. But you can't, you mustn't, 'know'. There's the real Entropy.

The deed is nothing. It is the thought that breeds fear; and we achieve little by lingering.

They don't know what it's like. Inside. For them it's only fun, even though I tell them it isn't. You see I don't delete. Anything. Ever.

That man's gaga," said Roger when they were out of hearing. "He's so far gone he's coming back.

But what can we do?" said Susan. "Think, and hope," said Cadellin. "I would rather seek and find," said Uthecar.