There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.

The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.

I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.

I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.