“When you’re old enough to write a book for children, by then you’ll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you’re an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.”

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

You chose books, I chose looks . Now see the difference?

Candy is dandy but liqueur is quicker.

Give us strength, oh Lord, to let our children starve.

Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It’s made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!

Two rights don’t equal a left.

The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by.

Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children – as long as you make them laugh as well.

We all have our moments of brilliance and glory.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

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?

Books are great. A lot of condensed knowledge in the palm of your hand.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

Her eyes are my favorite book to read.

Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant.

There is no great book than the elders of the home.

Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed’ is the title of the book.