Just because you've seen something doesn't mean you'll stop looking. There's always something you didn't see before.

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.

Just because you've seen something doesn't mean you'll stop looking. There's always something you didn't see before.

Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.

I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.

I'm convinced that imagination is at the heart of everything we do - in art, science, even astrophysics and higher mathematics. Imagination leads us to ask, "What if?"

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.