I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.

...and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

Many childrens writers dont have children of their own

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.