Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.

I have never known courage to be judged by the length of a man's hair. Or, for the matter of that, whether he has any hair at all.

When I was discharged, I attended the University of Paris and met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine. We soon married and eventually returned to the States.

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.

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

Hope is an essential thread in the fabric of all fantasies, an Ariadne's thread to guide us out of the labyrinth ... Human beings have always needed hope, and surely now more than ever.