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1 " ... 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 , The Voice That Thunders
2 " John Turner lived at Saltersford Hall, where his father was a tenant farmer. He was born in 1706 and became a packman, or jagger, with a train of four horses. His main occupation was from Chester and Northwich, carrying salt, to Derby, from where he would return with malt. His home in Saltersford was ideally placed on this prehistoric trade route.On Christmas Eve, 1735, (that is, when John was twenty-nine), he was on his way back from Northwich. It was snowing. But packmen were used to being on the road in all weathers and at all hours. They knew the hills better than anyone. They took no risks. Jaggers were essential to their communities and yet at the same time mistrusted. Travel in eighteenth century England was not for ordinary folk. Most people didn’t move more than four miles from their birthplace in their entire lives. Jaggers were looked on as boundary-striders, as Grendel is described in Beowulf, wild men, wodwose, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. They belonged more to the hills than to the valleys. Yet on that Christmas Eve, John Turner did not reach home. The next morning he was found dead, though his team of horses survived, covered by drifts. And by him, on the white, wind-smoothed land, was the single print of a woman’s shoe in the snow. "
3 " I live, at all times, for imaginative fiction; for ambivalence, not instruction. When language serves dogma, then literature is lost. I live also, and only, for excellence. My care is not for the cult of egalitarian mediocrity that is sweeping the world today, wherein even the critics are no longer qualified to differentiate, but for literature, which you may notice I have not defined. I would say that, because of its essential ambivalence, 'literature' is: words that provoke a response; that invite the reader or listener to partake of the creative act. There can be no one meaning for a text. Even that of the writer is a but an option."Literature exists at every level of experience. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expressed. The purpose of the storyteller is to relate the truth in a manner that is simple: to integrate without reduction; for it is rarely possible to declare the truth as it is, because the universe presents itself as a Mystery. We have to find parables; we have to tell stories to unriddle the world."It is a paradox: yet one so important I must restate it. The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth; but what we feel most deeply cannot be spoken in words. At this level only images connect. And so story becomes symbol; and symbol is myth.""It is one of the main errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the 'original form' of myth can be separated from its miraculous elements. 'Wonder is only the first glimpse of the start of philosophy,' says Plato. Aristotle is more explicit: 'The lover of myths, which are a compound of wonders, is, by his being in that very state, a lover of wisdom.' Myth encapsulates the nearest approach to absolute that words can speak. "
4 " There...is your spiritual obligation to literature: root out the reductive; seek excellence; pursue the numinous. And, along with a disciplined intellect (for one is of no use without the other) give to children their imaginations, of which they are being robbed with totalitarian intensity by the trash around them. "
5 " Because of my nature, I find 'spiritual' and 'creative' to be synonymous. I am not exclusively a Christian; but for me work is prayer. So in pleading for the nurture of creativity, in life and in education, I plead for the nuture of the spiritual. I cannot separate the two. "
6 " From my differing awareness, I sense something you may not yet. Especially among artists...resistance is growing. Conciousness is on the move. Something is at work in the world: a general recognition of the crisis of the spirit, of the banal and shoddy, in human affairs. It is universal and it must be met. Recently, an Australian Aboriginal shaman warned me: 'The Great Serpent has woken. Jarapiri stirs. The earth shakes. And the warriors are gathering. "
7 " Despite our daily observations to the contrary, I assure you that children are, by nature, spiritual beings, until we destroy through our example. In my own field of language I remember, and still can see, there being no problem here. A child knows, whether it be in the traditional structure of a fairy tale, or the special use of an archaism, when Mystery is engaged. "
8 " I am not decrying the profession of accountancy, only its appropriation of competence in every field. And if, as it looms, we are entering on a period biased toward materialism at the expense of progress, then we are in the hands of the accountant, a spiritual Ice Age, where all will be frozen and there will be no risk, and without risk, no movement, and without movement, no seeking, and without seeking, no future. Darkness will be upon the face of the deep. We must get aback of this. "
