My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

Go back' Taran shouted at the top of his voice.'Have you lost your wits?' Eilonwy, for it was she, half-halted. She had tucked her plaited hair under a leather helmet. The Princess of Llyr smiled cheerfully at him. 'I understand you're upset,' she shouted back, 'but that's no cause to be rude.' She galloped on. For a time, Taran could not believe he had really seen her.

Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?

Once you have courage to look upon evil, seeing it for what it is and naming it by its true name, it is powerless against you, and you can destroy it.

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.

Evil conquered?' said Gwydion. 'You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men's hearts whose flame can never be quenched.

A taste for adventure is by no means a masculine monopoly.