Quotes from David Almond

I know I'm writing better now than I ever did for adults because I'm writing for an audience who know that they don't know everything.

Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in their jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journey of exploration and discovery.

What are you?" I whispered. He shrugged again. "Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.

Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.

They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel," she said. "They say they're where your wings will grow again one day.

Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.

There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.

Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can't know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die?…Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can't. we have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.

Maybe we're all in somebody's dream. Maybe everything's a dream, and nothing else.

And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!

Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can't. We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

Everybody's got the seam of goodness in them, Kit," said Grandpa. "Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.

Look at all the life in this," she said. "Every pip could become a tree, and every tree could bear another hundred fruits and every fruit could bear another hundred trees. And so on to infinity." I picked the picks from my tongue with my fingers. "Just imagine," she said. "If every seed grew, there'd be no room in the world for anything but pomegranate trees.

I sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems.

I thought how you can never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening In their lives. Even when you got daft people or drunk people on buses, people that went on stupid and shouted rubbish or tried to tell you all about themselves, you could never really tell about them either... I knew if somebody looked at me, they'd know nothing about me, either.

The dead are often known to eat 27 and 53

We have each other, and our stories twist and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns.

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?" I said nothing. "What colour's a blackbird?" she said. "Black" "Typical!

Yes. But sad's alright. Sad's just apart of everything

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?

Can love help a person to get better?' I asked.

What is is?' 'I don't know. I don't even know if it's true or if it's a dream.' 'That's alright. Truth and Dreams are always getting muddled.

This is our world. Aye, there's more than enough of darkness in it. But over everything there's all this joy, Kit. There's all this lovely, lovely light.