If You Are Going To Make Companies,

I Would Hate To Live In The Country, Unless I Was Living On A Farm.

I Was Cleaning Out The Pigsty At A Farm In Wales, Where My Mother Had Rented A Room, When The Results Of My Final School Exam Were Handed To Me By The Postman, Along With The News That I Had A State Scholarship To Oxford. I Had Waited For This Letter For So Many Weeks That I Had Abandoned Hope, Deciding That I Had Failed Ignominiously.

The Kind Of Response I Hope For When I Write My Novels For Children: To Give Them A Chance To Recognize Something Of Their Own Feelings -- About Themselves, Their Parents, Their Friends -- And Their Own Situation As A Kind Of Subject Race, Always At The Mercy Of The Adults Who Mostly Run Their Lives For Them.

I Dislike The Word 'victim.' I Dislike Being Told That I 'lost' My Husband - As If I Had Idly Abandoned You By The Side Of The Railway Track Like An Unwanted Pair Of Old Shoes.

Children Often Have A Much Stronger Concept Of Morality Than Adults.