The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught. What a teacher can do... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.

We human beings grow through our failures, not our virtues.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.