Now you must close your eyes. Yes, that is it. Selinda, you, too. Good. Good. Bring in the dark that I may teach you to breathe. For it is breath that is behind words. And words that are the shapers of knowledge. And knowledge that is the base of understanding. And understanding, the link between sister and sister. And.
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...
Why am I working so hard? Going for 400 books, perhaps, but who's really counting?
They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.
Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.
Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.
I tell the truth,' she said. 'But I tell it slant.
Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
What was can never be again.
I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.
A mist still lay all about the walls and floors, hovering like a last breath on the lips of all the sleepers. As he walked through the castle, he marveled at how many lay asleep: the good people, the not-so-good, the young people and the not-so-young, and not one of them stirring. Not one.
Myths are stories that explain a natural phenomenon. Before humans found scientific explanations for such things as the moon and the sun and rainbows, they tried to understand them by telling stories.
If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?
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.
I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both.
Happy-ever-after is a fairy-tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive.
How often is the passing of one storm only a prelude to another.
And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she's ever going to be.
We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.
If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.
While I was in junior high, I wrote an entire essay in rhyme about manufacturing in New York State. In high school, I won a Scholastic poetry contest.
My beloved husband goes through radiation, and a book of sonnets is my passionate response. And then after he dies, I write another book of poems as a farewell. The two keywords here are passion and joy. I simply have a passion for writing, and I do it with joy.
A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.
Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.
What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?
I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.
You've got some power," Jakkin said. "One hug—and the lights go out!
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.
It seems like I've been writing since birth! I started writing poems before I got to school. I wrote the class musical in first grade - both words and music. It was about a bunch of vegetables who got together in a salad. I played the chief carrot!
The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?
Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.
I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.
If there is a single person at the nexus of fantasy literature, it is Terri Windling -- as editor, as writer, as painter, as muse.
Wanting to die and dying, she found were two separate things.
The storyteller in me asks: what if? And when I try to answer that, a story begins.
I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.
Their lips were too thin to ask forgiveness, and their minds too mean to understand love.
All around the castle, a briary hedge began to grow, with thorns as sharp as barbs.
He knew he was not a brave man, but he had a great sense of drama. In some circumstances it could seem the same. Forcing.
The hard bed, the stool beside it, the stark cross on the wall, each cast shadows. Only the man in the bed seemed shadowless. He was the stillest thing in the room.
You can only chase a butterfly for so long.
Ah—now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple.
He was always being sent away from place to place for lying. The problem was, he never lied. He simply saw truth differently from other folk. On the slant.
The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream.
Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.
Write, write, & write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.
The tales of Elfland do not stand or fall on their actuality but on their truthfulness, their speaking to the human condition, the longings we all have for the Faerie Other.
