Quotes from Isobelle Carmody

All through university years, I used to come up to Melbourne, go to Pizza Napoli with my friends and then to a movie.

Isn't that what writing is about? The constant attempt to understand the world?

If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions.

I don't believe in fairies floating around, and I don't believe in telepathy, but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say.

I wrote my first full book when I was fourteen, and that was 'Obernewtyn.' It was also the first book I had published. It was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to, and it was short listed for Children's Book of the Year in the older readers category in Australia.

What's gratifying is that it's my books that are being read and reread until they're battered over the years. I love that.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the notion of child abandonment, of a mother not being a good mother, that's built into the mother who sends the babes into the woods, and they use the bits of bread or stones to come home again.

She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.

I do see, in some younger writers, elements and things that I have used - and I am very touched and flattered because I am part of a tapestry that is being absorbed by authors.

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.

I believe excellent fantasy reflects us all, and yes, it can use those myths that underpin societies, our subconscious yearnings and longings, and perhaps our barren spirituality.

If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well - and children and young adults won't suffer anything else.

The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you.

First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time.

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition.

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.

The mirror had broken into millions of pieces and the wind blew them all over the world. If a person got a speck in their eye, the person would only see the ugly side of things from then on, but if a piece got in their blood and it reached their heart, it would freeze into a solid block of ice and they couldn't feel anything anymore

It is not foolish to ask a question of the world. We of Vlar-rei make songs or our questions. It is only foolish to want answers.

Mama, don't take him. We need him,' Jack whispered. 'Please. He will not forget you if you let him stay with us. He will love you for ever and every time he laughs, he will remember how you once laughed...

Strength without compassion is soulless and cruel. Weakness, too, has its place, for it brings understanding.

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.