58 Quotes by Geraldine McCaughrean

Never apologise for not being someone else. You're bound to find something you're good at, even if it's only writing stories.

The one thing that makes writing a better pastime than reading is that you can make things turn out the way you want in the end!

You sort of suspect if a book's fun to write, it will be fun to read.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

I read hugely as a child, but I slowed up when the print got smaller. I am a very slow reader. I don't know why. Maybe it is like some people chewing their food for ages and some wolfing it down.

I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.

I still keep thinking someone will penetrate my guilty secret - that I have been masquerading as a writer all these years while all I was really doing was enjoying myself, pursuing my passion.

I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel.