My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

I loved all the world's mythologies.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

King Arthur was one of my heroes - I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield and my uncle's cane for the sword Excalibur.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.

Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.

When I was discharged, I attended the University of Paris and met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine. We soon married and eventually returned to the States.