My memory of my home was that it was very happy, and that there was more fun and life there than there was anywhere else.

I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.

In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!

I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint - a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.

I think you've got to play the hand that you're dealt and stop wishing for another hand.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.