76 Quotes by Mal Peet

'Keeper' is about fathers, ultimately. and also conservation, commitment and ambition.

I was a bit odd. I read books and wanted to draw and go to art school.

I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships.

Remember that a good football novel has to have the same ingredients as any other good novel: drama, convincing and interesting characters, a strong story-line, and some kind of magic in the writing.

I worry about children not having a sense of any direct connection to the past.

Exposure is about, among other things, the ferocity of the press and the way - in an echo of some of Shakespeare's plays - the modern media creates heroes to destroy them.

What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.

Bootworks' Black Box Theatre has a maximum seating capacity of two - as long as one of you is happy to sit on the other's lap.

Benches and books have things in common beyond the fact that they're generally to do with sitting. Both are forms of public privacy, intimate spaces widely shared.