A Wizard of Earthsea

“The Princess Elfarran was only a woman,” said Vetch, “and for her sake all Enlad was laid waste, and the Hero-Mage of Havnor died, and the island Soléa sank beneath the sea.”

“The wise don’t need to ask, the fool asks in vain,”

To hear, one must be silent.”

I didn’t and don’t think this way; my mind doesn’t work in terms of war. My imagination refuses to limit all the elements that make an adventure story and make it exciting—danger, risk, challenge, courage—to battlefields.

I thought about it. Slowly the idea sank in. Would writing for older kids be so different from just writing? Why? Despite what some adults seem to think, teenagers are fully human. And some of them read as intensely and keenly as if their life depended on it. Sometimes maybe it does.

And fantasy—pure, old-fashioned fantasy, not mixed with science fiction—I liked the idea.

it has been lost

cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself

grew less and less

All day long a little of this dream-peace clung to his thoughts, and he took it, not as a good omen, but as a gift.

He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.