Allegory has to rely on a precise one-to-one relationship between story-element and meaning. A novel is more democratic: the meaning is not dictated or determined by the author, but is something that emerges in the space between the story and the reader's mind. Myth is a different matter. C.S. Lewis would say that a myth is a story that has the ( Read more... )

It is by such statements as "Once upon a time there was a dragon," or "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" - it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic human beings may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth.

With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right there. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE.

(Code Name Verity

A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.

Narrative is radical, creating us as it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words that they go down in flames and leave nothing but the scald... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell ( Read more... )

I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

...In fantasy, there is nothing but the writer's vision of the world. There is no borrowed reality of history, or current events... no comfortable matrix of the commonplace to substitute for the imagination, to provide ready-made emotional response, and to disguise flaws and failures of creation. There is only a construct built in a void, with ( Read more... )

What the book says, the book says best in its own words. For me to interpret it, translate it into generalities and abstractions, seems perverse and foolish. I am not a teacher, not a philosopher, not a scholar, I am a novelist. I think in story. I follow where the story takes me. I try to understand where I am going. I try to tell that. But what ( Read more... )

Style is... the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.