Margaret Mahy Quotes

I don't want to spin the world," Barney said. "I don't know what I want, but I do know it's not that."

"Nor do I!" Claire shook her head. "Poor Troy" If you can do almost anything, it's all the harder to choose the right thing to do. Poor Cole, too – coming in like a lion and then staying like a pet lamb. I suppose if most of us were asked, we'd think that magicians would be free of care, but somehow or other there are always
rules.

I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.

Do you think that clothes have a life of their own, and maybe have unsuitable affairs with opposite styles? I mean - you look at some people - their clothes go on flirting long after the people inside them have lost interest.

What's happened to the world? she was thinking. Everything has turned terrible ... and the bits that aren't terrible have gone mad. I don't understand anything anymore.

I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too.

Time was too much a part of love, for even in fairytales the proof of love was not its first moment, but its latest ones - that people lived happily ever after. Love at first sight was nothing but infatuation until proved by time ...

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

It's so dark - as if all the lights are just there to make the other places seem darker.

I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk.

Stamp, your name is to be Laura. I'm sharing my name with you. I'm putting my power into you and you must do my work. Don't listen to anyone but me. You are to be my command laid on my enemy. you'll make a hole in him through which he'll drip away until he runs dry. As he drips out darkness, we'll smile together, me inside, you outside. We'll crush him between our smiles.

Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.

There's a lot of things you can put up with, as long as you're not related to them.

There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.

I'm the Beast. You're the Beauty," he said. "It's all a story, isn't it?

There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren't there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what's the use of getting rid of - of wickedness, say - in the outside world if you let it creep back into things from inside you?

This was the hidden machinery of life, not a clean, clinical well-oiled engine, monitored by a thousand meticulous dials, but a crazy, stumbling contraption made up of strange things roughly fitted together – things like a huge water tap, the dogleg stairs, cheese in the soap dish, and a crocheted tea cosy stiff with dirt and topped by a doll's broken face.

I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child.

I, personally, have found reading a continual support to writing.

Practise make it perfect!

Ellis's understanding of himself and the world around him certainly develops because of his adventures, and part of that development comes through recognizing other people for what they are.

... But don't be late, Troy, or I'll ... " She hesitated and laughed, not entirely happily. "I don't suppose I'll ever need to worry about you again, will I? I don't suppose I've ever needed to worry over a magician."
"There are always car accidents," Tabitha declared cheerfully. "A car could come around the corner and ... wallop! You'd need a terrific magician to get out of that one ... "
"Or eagles dropping tortoises," Troy added, looking amused. "That happened in Ancient Greece, you know. An eagle dropped a tortoise on some dramatist and killed him."
"No eagles or tortoises here," said Tabitha, "but a bit could fall off a plane.

You won't forget that," Claire assured her.
"I like things written down," Tabitha mumbled. "Then you've got them for good.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

I don't know everything I feel, but I do know this. You mustn't ever want anyone but me, Big Science. If you look at any other girl I'll kill her.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

Pulverized by literature,' thought Miss Laburnum. 'The ideal way for a librarian to die.

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction.

Anyhow, isn't it a bit wrong to think happiness is all smooth and serene. Isn't it mostly a great energetic struggle - you against the universe - a great whopping opponent, with the referee in its pocket?

Your Barney?" Cole's eyebrows shot up.
"Yours?"

"He's mine all right!" Claire replied.

"Everyone in this family belongs to everyone else – belongs with everyone else, rather. I've looked after him for a year now – ironed his shirts, made his school lunches, told him stories. I made that dressing gown he's wearing, whereas no one knew you were alive this time last week. But what matters most is that he wants to be ours and he doesn't want to be yours. That's what counts.

She wanted everyone kind and affectionate, not passionate and tormenting – everything open, no maggoty secrets and silences, and no arguments with other, darker arguments hidden in them.

For in some ways the world was like a shopping centre, and he himself was a doubtful customer, often ineffectual, being talked into buying things he didn't want, things indeed which nobody in their right mind would want to buy.

The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.

All right," said Eden. "After all, we've got to hide somewhere. And even if they move on a bit faster than we can, they'll still leave signs, won't they?
"Yes, they'll drip blood and leave echoes of people laughing," said Timon in a dark voice. Eden looked at him apprehensively. But then Timon laughed himself. "Joking! Joking! Only joking!" he cried, and Eden nodded, echoing his laughter rather uncertainly.

Family! ... You might just as well celebrate battle, murder and sudden death.

Then, at last, sitting on her stretcher-bed, she took from the very bottom of her pack an old peacock-blue scarf folded around a heavy, square book. She unwrapped it and opened it very carefully, as if guilty secrets might fall from between its pages like pressed flowers. This was Harry's secret. She was a writer.

Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored

The shop for fuller figures could be seen through broad, green leaves, its windows full, not of dresses, but fat zeros, pot-bellied legless sixes and bosomy eights, and threes like pregnant, primitive goddesses. In the teashop the chairs were being stood on top of the tables and made a forest of their own, sprouting upwards in fountains of coloured leaves.

I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been.

In a way, the characters often do take over.

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

Something is going to happen, Laura thought. She was going to be kissed. On one side of a kiss was childhood, sunshine,innocence, toys and, on the other, people embracing, darkness, passion and the admittance of a person who, no matter how loved, must always have a quality of otherness, not only to her confidence, but somehow inside her sealing skin.

Fattening!" said Troy, looking at Tabitha's round face and plump arms.

"If I don't mind being fat, I don't see why other people should feel they've got to mind for me," Tabitha replied cheerfully. "And pies have got some food value – they've got vitamins or something, haven't they, Claire?

If people fainted from too much thinking I'd scarcely ever be conscious," Tabitha began at once. "I think and think all the time, and I've never fainted – not once." She looked over at Barney enviously. "Why do the best things always happen to other people and not to a promising writer?