[But] the adventure should hold something beyond the fairy-tale elements... The nature of fantasy allows happenings which reveal most clearly our own frailties and our own strengths. The inhabitants of Prydain are fantasy figures; I hope they are also very human.
...My concern is not with stretching the truth but simply trying to measure up to it.
We hold each other’s lives in our open hands, not in clenched fists. (The Black Cauldron)
Fantasy's hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
...Beginnings are always frightening - for a child at the first day of school, for an author at page one of a manuscript. Beginnings are signs of life and a chance for growth. The actively creative garden is plagued with its own crab grass of anxieties, doubts, and difficulties. But, as handsome as laurels may be, they are uncomfortable to rest on.
( I'm speaking in terms of beginnings instead of endings for this reason )
"Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone." (The High King)
"At the end of knowledge, wisdom begins... and at the end of wisdom, there is not grief, but hope." (The Foundling)
"We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself."
"We don't need to have just one favorite. We keep adding favorites. Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They're always with us. We just sort of accumulate them."
"For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are."