51 Quotes by Alan Garner

Everybody thinks some people are born with the "gift of gab" and some people aren't. But the truth is there is no "gift of gab." People who are good at conversation just know a few simple skills that anyone can learn.

Why are you here?""To fetch the woman I cut from the veil of the rock."“Why did you cut?""To send her spirit out, so that she would come to make the child, for me to teach to dance and sing and dream, to free the beasts within the rock to fill the world."“Have you found her?""She is not here. There are only people horrible to see."“Where are your stories?" said the other."I cannot tell them. My head is a cloud.

It's not a job but a condition.(Alan Garner on writing)

The deed is nothing. It is the thought that breeds fear; and we achieve little by lingering.

I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.

But when they reached Highmost Redmanhey, Susan said, “Uthecar, what’s wrong with the elves? I – don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve always imagined them to be – well, the ‘best’ of your people.” “Ha!”, said Uthecar. “They would agree with you! And few would gainsay them. You must judge for yourselves. But I will say this of the lios-alfar; they are merciless without kindliness, and there are things incomprehensible about them.

At dawn one still October day in the long ago of the world, across the hill of Alderley, a farmer from Mobberley was riding to Macclesfield fair.

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.