At The Pit's Bottom Is No Anger.

The Danger In Trying To Do Good Is That The Mind Comes To Confuse The Intent Of Goodness With The Act Of Doing Things Well.

Safety Lies In Catering To The In-group. We Are Not All Brave. All I Would Ask Of Writers Who Find It Hard To Question The Universal Validity Of Their Personal Opinions And Affiliations Is That They Consider This: Every Group We Belong To - By Gender, Sex, Race, Religion, Age - Is An In-group, Surrounded By An Immense Out-group, Living Next Door And All Over The World, Who Will Be Alive As Far Into The Future As Humanity Has A Future. That Out-group Is Called Other People. It Is For Them That We Write.

Dragons Are More Dangerous, And A Good Deal Commoner, Than Bears. Fantasy Is Nearer To Poetry, To Mysticism, And To Insanity Than Naturalistic Fiction Is. It Is A Real Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.

Reading Is Performance. The Reader--the Child Under The Blanket With A Flashlight, The Woman At The Kitchen Table, The Man At The Library Desk--performs The Work. The Performance Is Silent. The Readers Hear The Sounds Of The Words And The Beat Of The Sentences Only In Their Inner Ear. Silent Drummers On Noiseless Drums. An Amazing Performance In An Amazing Theater.

Whenever They Tell Me Children Want This Sort Of Book And Children Need This Sort Of Writing, I Am Going To Smile Politely And Shut My Earlids. I Am A Writer, Not A Caterer. There Are Plenty Of Caterers. But What Children Most Want And Need Is What We And They Don't Know They Want And Don't Think They Need, And Only Writers Can Offer It To Them.