Finding the colors again

"We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong
spices, and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old
and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the
child who dreamed that one day he would hunt the forests of the
night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last
forever, somewhere south of Oz, and north of Shangri-La.” –
George R.R. Martin

"Current cant equates fantasy with escapism, and current fashion would
have it that fantasy is both easy to read and to write. It isn't. When
it is done honestly, by a skillful writer, fantasy takes us far enough
beyond our daily perceptions to open us to the essential realities
beneath it. This is the true goal of all art."- Ellen Kushner

"All art, by definition of the word,  is fantasy in the broadest sense. The most uncompromisingly (should I say sordidly?) naturalistic novel is still a manipulation of reality.  Fantasy, too is a manipulation, a reshaping of reality. There is no essential conflict or contradiction between literary realism and literary fantasy, any more than between science and humanism. Technical details aside, most of the things you  can say about fantasy also apply to realism. I suppose you might define realism as fantasy pretending to be true; and fantasy as reality pretending to be a dream."  - Lloyd Alexander

"The world of reality has no room for wistful backward-looking; and even if it had, there are no more than a few people who actively retain the desire for [the sense of wonder] known in childhood or have the capacity to evoke it at will. These few, moreover, soon become strangers to their fellows, for they are the incomprehensible ones--the dreamers who take the sky for their skull, the ribs of mountains for their bones, who sense always the faculties of the primitive, and see always with the wondering eye of the child.

"They are the ones who never pass a secret  place in the woods without a stare of curiosity  for the mystery implied in all its mounds and hollow, who still turn corners with a lift of expectation at the heart. And to be a writer of fantasy, one must be among those few -- those fortunate few; for, to produce a work that answers all the demands of fantasy, is to suddenly turn the corner which  does at last show something strange and wonderful waiting to be seen, and -- most gloriously -- to know that long-ago sense of yearning at last fulfilled."  - Mollie Hunter