I'm the Beast. You're the Beauty," he said. "It's all a story, isn't it?

Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too.

Fear can give you urgent wings.

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

In a way, the characters often do take over.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored