Geraldine McCaughrean

“Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.”

“The one thing that makes writing a better pastime than reading is that you can make things turn out the way you want in the end!”

“Not everyone can be rich,' Peter went on. 'Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave! If we tell ourselves we can do it; if we say to our hearts, 'don't jump about'; if we carry ourselves like heroes... we can all be brave! We can all look Danger in the face and be glad to meet it, and draw our swords and say, 'Have at you, Danger! You don't scare me!' Courage is just there for the taking; you don't need money to buy it. You don't need to go to school to learn it! Courage is the thing, isn't it? Don't you think so, people? Aren't I right? Courage is the thing! All goes if courage goes!”

“Never apologise for not being someone else. You're bound to find something you're good at, even if it's only writing stories.”

“My brother, whom I adored, typed out a children's book illustrated by himself... at the age of 14. My sister, with whom I always shared a double bed, had that effortless superiority of someone six years older and anxious to show it. But we were each as shy as voles. It seemed safer to keep to each other's company.”

“You sort of suspect if a book's fun to write, it will be fun to read.”

“When people write fan-fic sequels to one of your books, it gives you a very strange feeling. It is very flattering but strange, as if the characters have come to life again without you knowing.”

“I wept my way through teaching practice.”

“You need to be able to climb into a narrative and zip it up under your chin. You need to be able to see through the eyes of the hero, smell what he's smelling, hear what he's hearing.”

“I read hugely as a child, but I slowed up when the print got smaller. I am a very slow reader. I don't know why. Maybe it is like some people chewing their food for ages and some wolfing it down.”

“I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel.”

“The chief thing is to make children feel good about themselves. They want to step into the shoes of a hero who is bigger and stronger, to face tremendous dangers and come home safely for tea.”

“I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.”

“Well, unfortunately, my father passed away before my first book was published, so he never lived to see me as an author. But I think my mum was suitably pleased because she was mad about words. If she ever came across a word that she didn't know, she would always look it up in the dictionary.”

“I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.”

“I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.”

“I started writing because I found I could spend more time in my own imagination by doing that than I could by reading.”

“Tell me a story,' demanded Fireflyer.'Why? Do you eat them, too, then?''Only the ohs and ayes and ees and oos. The Kays are too spikey and the zeds are too buzzzy and the ones with the dots get stuck in your teeth and the esses sometimes slide down inside your vest and tickle.”

“I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work.”

“We built that Wendy House our own selves, for Wendy! And you can't keep a Wendy out of her own Wendy House!”