86 Quotes by Margaret Mahy

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.

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.

I don’t think I prefer writing for one age group above another. I am just as pleased with a story which I feel works well for very small children as I do with a story for young adults.

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

I don’t want to die, really. I’m interested in what happens next, so I’ve got to keep on.

When, suddenly, on an ordinary Wednesday, it seemed to Barney that the world tilted and ran downhill in all directions, he knew he was about to be haunted again.

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.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can “take over” as they develop and change the author’s original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

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