There is no greater compliment for a writer than to have pleased a troubled child.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If anything I was probably loved and praised too much as a child. I think that's why I can't accept any compliments.
You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.
The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.
It seems to me that not only the writing in most children's books condescends to kids, but so does the art. I don't want to do that.
If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.
Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.
No one is drawn to writing about being happy or feelings of joy.
Children's authors don't talk down or patronise their younger readers.
No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything.