Morris Gleitzman

“I would never write stories with only despair and defeat and the dark side of life.”

“Kids who are nine, 10 and 11 are pretty sophisticated readers; they know that there isn't always a good outcome every time and that problems don't always have solutions.”

“It's our potential for good stuff I'm most interested in exploring, but that has most meaning when juxtaposed with things that can go wrong.”

“Kids aren't political, but around 10 years old, they are beginning to develop the moral grounding that might later, in their teens, develop into their first real political perspectives.”

“I wrote stories as a kid just for myself. One day, some of the kids in my class found some of my stories in my bag, and I was deeply embarrassed until I realised they enjoyed reading them.”

“Halfway through primary school, I realised that I was not as physically strong or fearless as many kids. So, in situations of conflict, I quickly learned that it worked better for me to get out of situations or maybe kind of, you know, prevail in a conflict situation by using humour than by trying to punch somebody out.”

“Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.”

“I prefer watching people on a screen, and I've had the most pleasurable people-watching experiences at the Palace Cinema in Balwyn.”

“I want to help children develop strengths that allow them to feel they don't have to push things away mentally... If we 'cotton-ball' kids, it produces adults who are too scared to think for themselves and are easily manipulated.”

“Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true.”

“We may not be in Manchester but we will always be united”

“If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.”

“In 1969, we emigrated to Australia. It was a big change. The heat, the flies, and the completely different tinned meats. The shock was so great, I stopped reading books for nearly a year.”

“My capacity for humour may have come largely from my father - he liked to entertain people, make people laugh.”

“I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.”

“Most of your life after puberty, you're either seeking to reproduce or living with the consequences of having done so. At 70, you start going back to being 11 again.”

“I like the idea of young readers using my stories as a sort of moral gym, where they can flex and develop their newly developed moral muscle.”

“I think the best writers use the language they use every day when they talk to friends. When we talk to each other, we tend to talk in short grabs rather than in long flowing sentences. I think that's not a bad way to write.”

“Kid's culture is often dismissed as superficial, like high fibre McDonald's, but it's so much more important than that.”

“Don't sit back and wait for God to do it all. Ask for His advice, but be prepared to do the hard yards yourself.”