Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.

Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the literature they read must reflect that. Otherwise we're just entertaining them to pass the time.

You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.

There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.