Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.

If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars.

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.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than 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 like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.

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.