“There is no place I know that compares to pure imagination.”

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.

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?

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

The older one gets, the more one feels that the present moment must be enjoyed, comparable to a state of grace.

The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now.

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

It’s natural that anyone is compared to their father.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

You learn a lot more when you’re going through a rough period compared to the good times when everything goes your way.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal.

I try to learn as much as I can because I know nothing compared to what I need to know.