...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

I find people confusing.

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.