I Think The U.k. Is Too Small

Bore Children, And They Stop Reading. There's No Room For Self-indulgence Or Showing Off Or Setting The Scene.

My Book Has A Very Simple Surface, But There Are Layers Of Irony And Paradox All The Way Through It.

Appalling Things Can Happen To Children. And Even A Happy Childhood Is Filled With Sadnesses.

When I Was Writing For Children, I Was Writing Genre Fiction. It Was Like Making A Good Chair. However Beautiful It Looked, It Needed Four Legs Of The Same Length, It Had To Be The Right Height And It Had To Be Comfortable.

And When You Look At The Sky You Know You Are Looking At Stars Which Are Hundreds And Thousands Of Light-years Away From You. And Some Of The Stars Don’t Even Exist Anymore Because Their Light Has Taken So Long To Get To Us That They Are Already Dead, Or They Have Exploded And Collapsed Into Red Dwarfs. And That Makes You Seem Very Small, And If You Have Difficult Things In You Life It Is Nice To Think That They Are What Is Called Negligible, Which Means They Are So Small You Don’t Have To Take Them Into Account When You Are Calculating Something.