15 Quotes by Sara Maitland

You can have a failed quest, but you can't have an achieved quest and no reward.

Now fairy stories are at risk too, like the forests. Padraic Column has suggested that artificial lighting dealt them a mortal wound: when people could read and be productive after dark, something fundamental changed, and there was no longer need or space for the ancient oral tradition. The stories were often confined to books, which makes the text static, and they were handed over to children.

Art is an artificial organization of experience...

My father taught me to be independent and cocky and free thinking, but he could not stand it if I disagreed with him.

Ian Watson did an almost full novel length treatment which I’ve never seen and when he finished it Stanley said to him. I need somebody to smear this with vaginal jelly, and I have to say when I first heard this that I was rather shocked, because he was quite gentlemanly.

Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.

Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not “in silence” but “with silence” – it was a silent creativity.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

If you tell people enough times that they are unhappy, incomplete, possibly insane and definitely selfish there is bound to come a grey morning when they wake up with the beginning of a nasty cold and wonder if they are lonely rather than simply “alone.”