“Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.”

“We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.”

“A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?”

“It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world…”

“You know how it is: as soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it's the most fascinating thing in the world.”

“He unpacks his bag of taleswith fingers quickas a weaver's picking the weft threads threading the warp.Watch his fingers.Watch his lipsspeaking the old familiar words: "Once there was and there was not, oh, best beloved, when the world was filled with wishes the way the sea is filled with fishes..."All those threadspulling us backto another world, another time,when goosegirls married welland frogs could rhyme,when maids spoke syllables of pearland stepmothers came to grief..... (from The Storyteller poem)”

“And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are:Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.”