I still have to look after it. I still have to protect it from interference while it becomes sure of itself and settles on the form it wants.

SOMETIMES, BY CHANCE OR FATE OR THE WORKINGS OF AN INSCRUTABLE Providence, we meet exactly the right work of art at exactly the right time to have the maximum impact on us.

The world of books is not a collection of random units of self-interest, but a living ecology.

So we have a protective responsibility: the role of a guardian, almost a parent.

Words change, they have a history as well as a contemporary meaning; it’s worth knowing those things.

we have to pay attention to what our imagination feels comfortable doing.

And I want to stress again that the business of the storyteller is with the story-line, with the path. You can make your story-wood, your invented world, as rich and full as you like, but be very, very careful not to be tempted off the path.

We should try always to use language to illuminate, reveal and clarify rather than obscure, mislead and conceal. The language should be safe in our hands

we who tell stories should be modest about the job, and not assume that just because the reader is interested in the story, they’re interested in who’s telling it.