“Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.”

Don’t gobblefunk around with words.

The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.

I’ve always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn’t I?

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it

But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.

What a fortunate fellow I am, I kept telling myself. Nobody has ever had such a lovely time as this!

To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.

The more risks you allow your children to make, the better they learn to look after themselves.

I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Kindness – that simple word. To be kind – it covers everything, to my mind. If you’re kind that’s it.

Rainbow drops – suck them and you can spit in six different colours.

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.

A great war shall burst forth from fishes of steel. Machines of flying fire, lobsters, grasshoppers, mosquitoes. The mass attacks shall be repulsed in the woods, when no child in Germany shall obey any longer.

We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

Home is, I suppose just a child’s idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

If there’s a God in heaven, what’s he waiting for? If He can’t hear the children, then he must see the war.

Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. It’s all I know.

I have three kids, and that’s a big part of staying focused.

When I was nine, I had this girlfriend and we used to have running races in the park. I wanted to be like Superman and fly in and rescue her.