The children's book world has given me wonderful friendships and an unbelievably rich life.

That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?