With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light - by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected.

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.

What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?

I hate being good. -Mary Poppins

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for, if you are honest, you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.