“And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

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.

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.

Aggressive mindset allows for less pain physically and mentally.

No one should be allowed to violently trample on the law.

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

We do not need to be afraid, because God will change our hearts and give us the blessing reserved for those who allow Him to change them.

There’s a drive in me that won’t allow me to do certain things that are easy.

There’s a drive in me that won’t allow me to do certain things that are easy.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.