In fantasy stories we learn to understand the differences of others, we learn compassion for those things we cannot fathom, we learn the importance of keeping our sense of wonder. The strange worlds that exist in the pages of fantastic literature teach us a tolerance of other people and places and engender an openness toward new experience. Fantasy puts the world into perspective in a way that 'realistic' literature rarely does. It is not so much an escape from the here-and-now as an expansion of each reader's horizons.

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.

Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself.

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.

Sometimes living takes more courage than dying.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

I believe that culture begins in the cradle . . .To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future.