Quotes from Meg Rosoff

If there was ever a more perfect day in the history of time it isn't one I've heard about.

And after awhile of this my brain and my body and every single inch of me that was alive was flooded with the feeling that I was starving, starving for Edmond. And what a coincidence, that was the feeling I loved best in the world.

I guess the difference between Gin and me is that when Gin got shut in the barn she thought Edmond didn't love her anymore but because I could feel Edmond out there somewhere always loving me I didn't have to howl all night.

At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an Idea. Another person. An idea of a person.

I can't even trust my own imaginary dog. How much lower can a person get?

Osbert was the only one who didn't seem suspicious. He was so interested in the Decline of Western Civilization that he missed the version of it taking place under his nose.

It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.

It's a strange sensation to live inside another person's life, to wonder all the time what he is doing, or thinking or feeling.

Time erodes us all.

I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn't one that could touch us.

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

Accept love instinctively, without responsibility or conditions.

I lived in New York for 10 years, and every New Yorker sees a shrink.

My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind.

I'm constantly snatching my books out of the hands of precocious ten-year-olds who are simply too young to read them, despite parents insisting that dear Octavia has a reading age of 28. I remember trying to read 'In Cold Blood' at the age of twelve, and realising that just because you can read book doesn't mean you should.

Although I've lived in England for more than twenty years, I still have a foreigner's passion for all the details of English history and rural life.

I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields.

Every war has turning points and every person too.

I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn't one that could touch us.

The average attention span of the modern human being is about half as long as whatever you're trying to tell them.

Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals.

When I was at university, there was such a strong delineation between city kids and those who had grown up the suburbs. City kids were so at home in the world, in a way that suburban kids take years to catch up, if indeed they ever can.