"There's lots of kinds of chains. You can't see most of them, the one's that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak, snap like this one did. That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all."
— Bruce Coville (Into the Land of the Unicorns)

"'So he decided he would never listen to anybody he knew? That's just like someone in a fairy tale.'

'Knowing he had given his trust amiss, how could he bestow it again?'

'That's foolish. Did he expect never to make any mistakes?'"
— Pamela Dean (The Whim of the Dragon)

"So the Dark did a simple thing. They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing--fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplsih anything of great worth--fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such great fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds."
— Susan Cooper (Silver On The Tree)

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers)

""If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.""
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

"'But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that darkness?' asked Drinian.

'Use?' replied Reepicheep. 'Use, Captain?' If you mean by filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as I have ever heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.'"
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader")

"This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss."
— Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore)

"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."
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)

"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?"
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."
— Carl Sagan

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
— G.K. Chesterton

"All we have is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us. "
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"This is our world. Aye, there's more than enough of darkness in it. But over everything there's all this joy, Kit. There's all this lovely, lovely light."
— David Almond (Kit's Wilderness)

"Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After."
— James Thurber (The 13 Clocks)

"That's a sure way to tell about somebody--the way they play, or don't play, make-believe."
— Madeleine L'Engle (Dragons in the Waters)

"But just now, he'd gotten on his knees and proposed marriage, like in a television commercial for a diamond ring. Except of course they had the roll of duct tape instead, which, when you came to think about it, was a far more practical item. Such a bad mistake it would be, to embark on marriage and adult life without a nice supply of duct tape."
— Nancy Werlin (Impossible)

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle