John Christopher quotes:

In the early stages of writing children's books, an experienced lady editor said that while girls read boys' books, the converse was not true, and I may have been influenced by that.

The apple which tempts my characters is the one that will remove the knowledge of good and evil. I suppose it's something of a reversal of the conventional Eden story: Freedom of thought is perhaps the greatest good, and needs to be fought for and sacrificed for.

Some people are oil and water.

The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.

I think before I act---and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.

As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.

Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.

What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.

We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.

You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.

There is always something to lose. But maybe more to gain.

A man faced death, but when death drew back forgot it until the next time.

We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.

Truth does not surround itself with lies.

I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.

There are times when thinking about something is the worst possible policy.

And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.

What men do matters more than what they know.

It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.

His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold.

Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.