Top 120 Lloyd Alexander Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Fiction Quotes, Quotes About Writing

2. “Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Happy Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Adventure Quotes, Reading Quotes

3. “We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Curiosity Quotes

4. “Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Reading Quotes

5. “We hold each other’s lives in our open hands, not in clenched fists.”

— Lloyd Alexander

6. “Seize the day, whatever’s in it to seize, before something comes along and seizes you.”

— Lloyd Alexander

7. “Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.”

— Lloyd Alexander

8. “Two cats can live as cheaply as one, and their owner has twice as much fun.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Fun Quotes

9. “The dear girl, I fear, may be contemplating some alarming, disruptive perhaps dangerous project. In which case, I would naturally do all in my power to keep her from any such rash or foolhardy enterprise – unless she wished me to accompany her.”

— Lloyd Alexander

10. “If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.”

— Lloyd Alexander

11. “Are you slow-witted? I’m so sorry for you. It’s terrible to be dull and stupid.”

— Lloyd Alexander

12. “Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don’t forget to put out your nets!”

— Lloyd Alexander

13. “Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.”

— Lloyd Alexander

14. “The only thing a cat worries about is what’s happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.”

— Lloyd Alexander

15. “Stale water is a poor drink. Stale skill is worse. And the man who walks in his own footsteps only ends where he began.”

— Lloyd Alexander

16. “Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?”

— Lloyd Alexander

17. “Who but lovers dream alike?”

— Lloyd Alexander

18. “What you may seek and what you may find are not always one.”

— Lloyd Alexander

19. “That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood.”

— Lloyd Alexander

20. “Just because you’ve seen something doesn’t mean you’ll stop looking. There’s always something you didn’t see before.”

— Lloyd Alexander

21. “Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues – it’s one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.”

— Lloyd Alexander

22. “If a storyteller worried about the facts – my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?”

— Lloyd Alexander

23. “How easy it is to think well of ourselves. Until the moment is upon us, we can never be certain.”

— Lloyd Alexander

24. “For the odd thing about wisdom is the more you use it the more it grows; and the more you share, the more you gain. You’d be amazed how few understand that.”

— Lloyd Alexander

25. “There is truth in all things, if you understand them well.”

— Lloyd Alexander

26. “On the level of high art, in their common efforts to express human truths, relationships, attitudes, and personal visions, children’s literature and adult literature meet and sometimes merge, and we wonder then whether a given work is truly for children or truly for grown-ups. The answer, of course, is: for both.”

— Lloyd Alexander

27. “But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging.”

— Lloyd Alexander

28. “Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you’re required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children’s books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction.”

— Lloyd Alexander

29. “For Wayfarers still journeying, for Wanderers at rest.”

— Lloyd Alexander

30. “If life is a loom, the pattern you weave is not so easily unraveled.”

— Lloyd Alexander

31. “If the pull of the outside world is strong, there is also a pull towards the human. The cat may disappear on its own errands, but sooner or later, it returns once again for a little while, to greet us with its own type of love.”

— Lloyd Alexander

Featured in: Strong Quotes

32. “The muse in charge of fantasy wears good, sensible shoes.”

— Lloyd Alexander

33. “There is more honor in a field well plowed than in a field steeped in blood.”

— Lloyd Alexander

34. “Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death.”

— Lloyd Alexander

35. “I can’t stand people who say ‘I told you so.’ That’s worse than somebody coming up and eating your dinner before you have a chance to sit down.”

— Lloyd Alexander

36. “Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

— Lloyd Alexander

37. “True kinship has naught to do with blood ties, however strong they be. I think we are all kin, brothers and sisters one to the other, all children of all parents.”

— Lloyd Alexander

38. “She had no particular breed in mind, no unusual requirements. Except the special sense of mutual recognition that tells dog and human they have both come to the right place.”

— Lloyd Alexander

39. “And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain.”

— Lloyd Alexander

40. “I only suggest to you: Will you dwell on killing this man? You wish for revenge? If you do, he has already killed you by slow poison. So, let it go. Why waste your time? His life will see to his death.”

— Lloyd Alexander

41. “Craftsmanship isn’t like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it’s empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains.”

— Lloyd Alexander

42. “For the deeds of a man, not the words of a prophecy, are what shape his destiny.”

— Lloyd Alexander

43. “But it’s very thoughtful of you to say that. It shows a kind heart, and I think that’s so much more important than being clever.”

— Lloyd Alexander

44. “There’s this huge number of desperate people.”

— Lloyd Alexander

45. “My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.”

— Lloyd Alexander

46. “I intend to follow the path of virtue. It will not be overcrowded.”

— Lloyd Alexander

47. “Even in a fantasy realm, growing up is accomplished not without cost.”

— Lloyd Alexander

48. “True allegiance is only given willingly.”

— Lloyd Alexander

49. “Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.”

— Lloyd Alexander

50. “Behind one truth there is always yet another.”

— Lloyd Alexander