Life & Wisdom Quote by Margaret Mahy

There is a quiet provocation in Mahy’s claim that writing and reading are “different aspects of a single imaginative act.” It nudges against the romantic myth of the author as solitary genius, suggesting instead that creativity is less a lightning strike than a long apprenticeship in attention. The librarian detail isn’t cute autobiography; it’s a credential. Libraries are where stories are de-glamorized into a daily practice: browsing, sorting, rereading, noticing patterns across genres and ages. Mahy frames that environment as training for the mind, not just a workplace.

Her intent is partly corrective. By saying librarianship made her “even more of a reader,” she positions reading as an active, skillful labor that can be intensified, not a passive hobby that precedes “real” creation. The subtext lands as a defense of children’s literature and popular storytelling too: if reading and writing share an imaginative engine, then the value of a book isn’t determined by its prestige but by how fully it recruits the reader’s inner stage.

Context matters: Mahy built a career writing for young people, where the reader’s participation is obvious and immediate. Children don’t politely endure; they co-author meaning with their curiosity, fear, and play. In that light, her line is also a manifesto for craft. Writers should read like librarians: widely, hungrily, without snobbery, always filing away what moves people. The imaginative act is shared, communal, and rigorously earned.