Quotes from Meg Rosoff

The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess.

I've been fired five times for having a bad attitude.

In the odd moment when I am not thinking about horses, I write books.

My husband is my most valuable resource.

Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.

I think most people struggle over a matter of years to find a satisfying way to live.

There's an overwhelming sense of paranoia in the suburbs. People there seem so much more paranoid to me than people in the city about their kids being kidnapped or their parties being raided or their drinks being spiked. There's a kind of hysteria about that.

But I would like to make an important point before this goes any further and that is if anyone feels like arresting me for corrupting an innocent kid then all I can say is that Edmond was not corruptible. Some people are just like that and if you don't believe me it just means you've never met one of them yourself. Which is your loss.

I frightened myself. I became the ghost Piper was so scared of.

The real truth is that the war didn't have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop.

Now let's try to understand that falling into sexual and emotional thrall with an underage blood relative hadn't exactly been on my list of Things to Do while visiting England,but I was coming around to the belief that whether you liked it or not, Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.

I'm a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore. Today, as most days, it is 1962. The year I discovered love.

I was pretty far gone, but not so far gone that I thought anyone with half a toehold in reality would think what we were doing was a good idea.

Maybe he's lonely, she said, and I just looked at her wondering if she expected me to open a Home for the Socially Challenged or what. Then she started giggling and I had the feeling we were thinking the same thing, namely, some people are lonely for all the right reasons.

I will not always be happy, but perhaps, if I'm lucky, I will be spared the agony of adding pain to the world.

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance and because I liked how fierce the word looked

There was no need for courtship; they simply met one day and were together after that.

Such a courageous boy I was. To act brazenly under scrutiny and risk further injury to my wounded heart. Ah, the resilience, the blind, dumb persistence of youth.

Fate is trying to kill me. I miss my dog. What's a doctor going to say? You're not ill, you're mad as a muffin? They'll either lock me up or tell me to get a grip and no one will believe the truth anyway.

I was coming around to the belief that whether you liked it or not, Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop

Every war has it's turning points, and every person too.

I give thanks for all that has passed, for all that is passing, and for all that is yet to come.

but all I could think was in New York that kid would have been stuck in a straitjacket practically from birth and dangled over a tank full of Educational Consultants and Remedial Experts all snapping at his ankles for the next twenty years arguing about his Special Needs and getting paid plenty for it.

I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments.