Favorite books and authors while growing up - I'd need a book to list them all. For the sake of brevity: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, world's mythology, the Arthurian legends. And the unabridged dictionary. And they're still my favorites. They get better each time I read them.

And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain.

Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.

If we nourish imagination, we nourish everything else.

...righteousness [is] always more believable when combined with dreariness.

If you want truth you should begin by giving it.

You have a point," said Fronto, "and even a poet must occasionally bow to logic.