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I'd always been around kids, and when you don't have kids, you have a lot more time to do things. Before I had kids, I was a lot more prolific and wrote books a lot faster.

It is probably true that I would not have had as many children or mothers in my books without being a mother with children. It is definitely true that I would not have written about the Civil War without having a little guy who was obsessed with it.

My first four books were not published because nobody wanted them. They were adult books, not kids' books.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.

For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.

I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

I didn't read children's books when I was a child. The only books in our house were ration books.