"I remember the first time I read The Lord of the Rings, in high school sometime. I read the last few pages, in which the hobbit Frodo sails in his old age for the lands of the West, where heroes go, the awful price of carrying the ring and breaking the back of darkness paid at last. I went out onto the patio of my parent's house, and I stood for a long time, looking at the sunset. No story, no history, no instructive biography or sermon had ever made me feel the way I felt then: that humanity had an infinite capacity for nobility, for goodness, for strength used with wisdom and informed by mercy, and that I was part of that."
--Emma Bull, "Why I Write Fantasy" (1990)
--Emma Bull, "Why I Write Fantasy" (1990)