Kevin Crossley-Holland Quotes

That's where the raiders would come from, and where Wales begins. That's where the world starts to turn blue.

There are Arthurian legends in 14 or 15 medieval European languages. They are the product of no one time or place. On the contrary, in sum they represent a tremendous mine of human understanding, rather as the Bible does.

Playing in an orchestra is completely different to playing on my own.
Sometimes I played, sometimes listened; instead of waiting my turn, I sometimes interrupted another player, sometimes I argued, sometimes agreed.
My flute is my mouthpiece and I felt as if I was actually joining in a conversation.

Lif and Lifthrasir will have children. Their children will have children.
There will be life and new life, life everywhere on earth. That was the end; and this is the beginning.

I see the role of the writer as creating a room with big windows and leaving the reader to imagine. It's a meeting on the page.

I am seriously interested in the psychology of childhood. And I've given a lot of my life to trying to see questions of personal development, as well as the great issues of the day, from a child's point of view.

You can teach someone a skill but you can't teach them spirit.

For each detail I include, I throw dozens away. So I guess the first trick is to pick the right details, the most revealing details. Then I think one must simply write quick, clean, bright prose. For me, this means rewriting and rewriting: almost never adding, almost always cutting.

A culture finds the gods it needs.

Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.

That's what happens when you're really concentrating. Time stands still. Time flies!

When I was a boy, I took over the shed at the bottom of the garden and displayed fossils and potsherds and coins in it and proudly called it my 'museum'. I charged people to come in, and my most prized possession was a Saracen shield dating from the Crusades.

In the beginning was the word, and primitive societies venerated poets second only to their leaders. A poet had the power to name and so to control; he was, literally, the living memory of a group or tribe who would perpetuate their history in song; his inspiration was god given and he was in effect a medium.

Everything, I thought, everything keeps changing. Changing shape, changing colour, changing sound.

The three sons of Bor had no liking for Ymir ... At last they attacked Ymir and killed him. His wounds were like springs; so much blood streamed from them and so fast, that the flood drowned all the frost giants except Bergelmir and his wife. They embarked in their boat and rode out on a tide of gore