Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
cause when there's life there's still hope
Anything that gets children reading is fine.
I write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do.
I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.
It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.
Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.
I don't want to be separate from something that's important to me.
Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.
Stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions.
As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.
If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.
Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other
But I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.
I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.
I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.
Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.
There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.
I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers
We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers.
Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.
Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us.
Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.
Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.
I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.
Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.
But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.
I got married young, far too young, but it is fine. We are still married 48 years later. I got married at 19.
Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.
Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.
Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.
You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.
Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.
There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?
When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.
Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them.
It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.
A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.
Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today.
By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.
Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!
The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts.
It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.
That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.
What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.
When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.
I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny.