Isobelle Carmody

“If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well - and children and young adults won't suffer anything else.”

“Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.”

“Strength without compassion is soulless and cruel. Weakness, too, has its place, for it brings understanding.”

“The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.”

“I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you.”

“What's gratifying is that it's my books that are being read and reread until they're battered over the years. I love that.”

“First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time.”

“Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.”

“You must not let me out,' it warned him gently, as it saw his eyes rest on the lock.'If you release me now that I know my nature, I could not help but unmake the enchantment of the mirrors. You see, they are tame now and they show only what people want and need to see in them. The wildness of them is bound up in my form, though I did not know it for a long time. If I were uncaged, I could not help but tear at the enchantment until I was unnamed. Then I would fly into all of the mirrors and windows and into shining footpaths after rain. The mirrors would become wild and they would be absolutely, utterly truthful. Everything would be seen for what it truly was. My laughter would greet every lie and every pretense. It would rumble like a volcano under the smooth surface of everything. You can imagine the chaos it would cause here, for those who dwell in the greylands do so because the mirrors are tamed. If I were free, people would come to be afraid of them. They would cease to believe in their reflections and eventually they would no longer believe in themselves. No, laughter must remain caged here.”

“I don't believe in fairies floating around, and I don't believe in telepathy, but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say.”

“If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions.”

“I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.”

“I believe excellent fantasy reflects us all, and yes, it can use those myths that underpin societies, our subconscious yearnings and longings, and perhaps our barren spirituality.”

“Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life.”

“That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying.”

“The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.”

“Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.”

“The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.”

“Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself.”

“The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.”