Quote

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I'd written, I don't want to leave that behind.

I eventually just imagined being a little boy who was quote unquote 'normal': who could learn like all the kids around me that I felt excluded from. And I imagined myself into one of these and into someone who could read.

I was always meant to be a writer. I've felt that way since I was a child.

As much as I love my daughters, I wasn't happy with only being a stay-at-home-dad, and my wife encouraged me to try, to really try, at being a writer. More than anything, I didn't want to let her down.

When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.

As a reader, I'm often put off by authors and story-lines without families or children and all of the angst and joy they bring with them.

As is said about most writers, on the one hand, all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.

I realised that I had always been writing things that other people wanted me to write and not what I really wanted to write, so I felt like I was losing my way.

I never grew up thinking I wanted to be a quote-unquote star or anything. My thing was just feeling blessed to be able to make my living acting.

Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.