Lloyd Alexander Quotes

A lot of people are very sacred with their ideas, and there is something to protecting yourself in that way, but there's also something to idea sharing, or being the person who makes the mistake in public so people can study that.

The best thing to do is to write about what you know, and if you write about what you know you can always pull those nice little tidbits that hook people, that shows that you know about this world and can bring people into a world that they may not know nothing about.

It’s very hard to hold onto new technology. It gets around.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.

The one thing I've found is that someone always knows more than you do, including your babies. There are loads of things people presume I know about that I don't.

I'm afraid a lot of people have lost a lot of money over the years betting on me.

... not talking about things she doesn't understand to people who do or about things she does to people who don't.

If you've been given opportunities then you have to create opportunities. If you're given knowledge by people, share your knowledge. If you were born with talent, show your talent off.

Part of our job as human beings is to share our knowledge and share the things we've learned. So we can either save people from making the same mistakes, or give them hope.

In my life there were a lot of situations where I could have been killed or some officer might have been killed chasing me, a lot of things could be different. Now, you know that's experience you can't buy. And it's there in my rearview mirror and I can refer to it in my writing. I have the experience to talk about things some people only imagine.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. . . . Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Most people ignore opportunities because they see only danger. Entrepreneurs ignore danger because they see only opportunities.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people’s lives.

If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can't be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.

It seemed to me to be a parable of the exchange of goods, rather Marxist in some ways, in the new world of global forces. What the forgers do is write the brand name to try and change it, and it works! Loads of people buy fake Prada handbags, or Chanel sunglasses; they've been changed. They have been truly, really changed.

Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.

I think that a lot of times, I trust people I shouldn't, and it turns out right, and it makes me feel a little better about it.

There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.

The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.

If you enjoy reading, writing, learning, and sharing what you have learned, don't hesitate to look for a life where you can continue to do those things. It could be as a scientist, an educator, an editor, a journalist, the founder of an organization. You only live once, and it is a tragedy if you deny yourself these options without trying to pursue them.

The first rule in keeping secrets is nothing on paper: paper can be lost or stolen or simply inherited by the wrong people; if you really want to keep something secret, don't write it down.