“For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.”

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

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!

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

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.

Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational.

I love musicals and I’m happy they are coming back because I’d love to do more.

The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end.

Life is a wheel, and if you wait long enough, it always comes back around to where it started.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

Champions come and go, but to be legendary you got to have heart, more heart than the next man, more than anyone in the world.

When it comes to fashion, I like to see individuality.