But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.

This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story.

You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text. It's not like the text of Paradise Lost or James Joyce's Ulysses, and you have to adhere to that exact text.

Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.