Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.

There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.

... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.