Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.

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.

Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition.

There's some that came here never believing they were dead. They insisted all the way that they were alive, it was a mistake, someone would have to pay; made no difference. There's others who longed to be dead when they were alive, poor souls; lives full of pain or misery; killed themselves for a chance of a blessed rest, and found that nothing had changed except for the worse, and this time there was no escape; you can't make yourself alive again.

There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.

I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales.