Alan Garner Quotes

“She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.”

— Alan Garner

“The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can't be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.”

— Alan Garner

“I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.”

— Alan Garner

Lleu is a hard lord," said Huw, "He is killing Gronw without anger, without love, without mercy. He is hurt too much by the woman and the spear. Yet what is there when it is done? His pride. No spear. No friend."
Roger started at Huw. "You're not so green as you're grass-looking, are you?" he said. "Now you mention it, I have been thinking- That bloke Gronw was the only one with any real guts at the end."
"But none of them is all to blame," said Huw. "It is only together they are destroying each other."
"That Blod-woman was pretty poor," said Roger, "however you look at it."
"No," said Huw. "She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she was longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns.

— Alan Garner

I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.

— Alan Garner

“I hope there isn't,' [a final answer] said Colin. I'm for uncertainty. As soon as you think you know, you're done for. You don't listen and you can't hear. If you're certain of anything, you shut the door on the possibility of revelation, of discovery. You can think. You can believe. But you can't, you mustn't, 'know'. There's the real Entropy.”

— Alan Garner

“-'They don't know what it's like. Inside. For them it's only fun, even though I tell them it isn't. You see I don't delete. Anything. Ever.”

— Alan Garner

I wanted us to have a holiday, not a ruddy breakdown.

— Alan Garner

“Why are you here?"
"To fetch the woman I cut from the veil of the rock."
"Why did you cut?"
"To send her spirit out, so that she would come to make the child, for me to teach to dance and sing and dream, to free the beasts within the rock to fill the world."
"Have you found her?"
"She is not here. There are only people horrible to see."
"Where are your stories?" said the other.
"I cannot tell them. My head is a cloud.”

— Alan Garner

“The prince went straight to the king of dragons, who took him on his back to the distant mountain, and with his fire he split the crystal, and the red fox that had shimmered like a ruby in its clear heart ran out. But the king of eagles pounced on it from the sky, and ripped the fur a darker red. Up sprang the raven, and fled on the wind, but the king of falcons closed with it, and the talons met in the raven's heart.”

— Alan Garner

“The deed is nothing. It is the thought that breeds fear; and we achieve little by lingering.”

— Alan Garner

“But what can we do?" said Susan.
"Think, and hope," said Cadellin.
"I would rather seek and find," said Uthecar.”

— Alan Garner

Oh, drop dead, you miserable cow.

— Alan Garner

“As far as the world was concerned, from 1979 to 1996, I didn't publish any original material; it just wasn't there.”

— Alan Garner

“Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.”

— Alan Garner

I learnt that I must never finish a book with nothing else to do.

— Alan Garner

“I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.”

— Alan Garner

“My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.”

— Alan Garner

“My primary tongue, I would call North-West Mercian.”

— Alan Garner

“The thing that I was brought up to prize above everything else is the intellect. There is no problem that the intellect cannot solve, but it never had an original thought. Originality is the realm of the unconscious.”

— Alan Garner

“My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.”

— Alan Garner

“I loathe crowds. I especially don't like cities. A city involves biomass. And biomass gets to me.”

— Alan Garner

“I've learned never to try and force words to come.”

— Alan Garner

“If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.”

— Alan Garner

“My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read 'Boneland.'”

— Alan Garner

“My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.”

— Alan Garner

“I don't think I've ever frightened myself before when writing, but there were areas where there was terror, as though I was looking into somewhere that I didn't know existed before, and it frightened me.”

— Alan Garner

“My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.”

— Alan Garner

Im not supposed to be within two hundred feet of a school or a Chuck E. Cheese.

— Alan Garner

“It's where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this. Plus it's not a purse, it's called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.”

— Alan Garner

“I wish Monkeys could Skype. Maybe one day.”

— Alan Garner

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

— Alan Garner

“When a monkey nibbles on a weenis, it's funny in any language.”

— Alan Garner

“Hitting the gym to release stress is not nearly as effective as hitting the people that cause the stress to begin with.”

— Alan Garner

“When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.”

— Alan Garner