18 Quotes by Jill Paton Walsh

Harriet said, "You shouldn't have reminded me to sign that book, Peter.""Why ever not? Have you suddenly become bashful about your hard-earned glories?""Because it watn's hers," said Harriet. "It was a library copy.""Stroke of luck for the ratepaers of the City of Westminster," he said, grinning.

And may God better understand and love us, than we, in our weakness, can do him.

It's amazing […] how perfectly honest people who would starve rather than steal sixpence, will steal books without compunction.

It’s just that we wear rose-coloured spectacles when we return here [to Oxford] – we are dazzled by the foolish idealism of our youthful years.

The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales.

Bunter came with me in the role of a friend. A role he has always played to perfection.""It does not require dissimulation, my lord," said Bunter."Thank you," said Peter.

My grandfather had a proper bookcase of egghead books, and he gave them to me in alphabetical order. So we moved from Aeschylus to the Brontas, and I can still remember the great relief of going from the dipus cycle to Jane Eyre.

I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.

I worked for many years as a writer for children and then wrote two adult novels of the kind they call 'literary' without any very great disturbance to this kind of life. Then, something went wrong. My third adult novel was rejected by the publisher of the first two. And I could not understand the criticism offered.