Lloyd Alexander

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

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.

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.

I didn't know if I'd be good with children. Actually talking with them, I mean. But I am good with them.

I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.

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

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.

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.

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

Talented people are finding that writing for young people is as demanding of high quality as writing for adults.

From as far back as I can remember, I always loved the King Arthur stories, fairy tales, mythology - things like that. So it was very natural for me when I came to write the 'Prydain' books to sort of follow that direction.

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

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.

My imagination can do whatever it wants to do. This gives me a great sense of freedom.

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

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.

I first wrote for adults, but when I started writing for young people, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life. I was able to express my own deepest feelings far more than I ever could when writing for adults.

I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.

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

I used the imaginary kingdom not as a sentimentalized fairyland but as an opening wedge to express what I hoped would be some very hard truths.

I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out... On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.

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.

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.

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.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.