Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

Alexander’s remark pushes back against the common charge that fantasy is mere escapism. He argues that imaginative literature can clarify reality by translating human experience—fear, courage, loss, moral choice—into heightened, symbolic forms. In this view, dragons, quests, and invented worlds are not distractions but instruments: they let readers rehearse ethical dilemmas at a safe distance, recognize patterns of behavior, and feel truths that may be harder to face directly in realistic settings. The quote also implies a defense of children’s and young-adult fantasy as serious art, capable of cultivating empathy and moral imagination rather than simply providing entertainment.