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I've had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn't write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read.

One of the first serious attempts I made to write a novel was when I was in Grade 6 and I had read 'Matilda.' I wrote my own version and my teacher had it bound and permitted me to read it to the class - cementing my love of reading, writing and Roald Dahl!

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

My writing of fiction comes under a very general heading of those teachers, critics, scholars who like to try their own hand once or twice in their lives.

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.

In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.