Quotes from Geraldine McCaughrean

The richer you are, I've worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens.

The moment a child answers the question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' he is halfway to being an adult.

The gods never meant you to live forever, so why spoil they life they did give you? Is a rainbow any less beautiful because it's short-lived? Or because you can't grasp hold of it? Consider, man. Perhaps it is beautiful expressly because of that.

Like everything perfect, he set up a ferocious pain inside me -- a flickering, griping sort of pain, because nothing as marvelous as that is ever within reach, is it? Nothing as beautiful can ever last.

Well, unfortunately, my father passed away before my first book was published, so he never lived to see me as an author. But I think my mum was suitably pleased because she was mad about words. If she ever came across a word that she didn't know, she would always look it up in the dictionary.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.

My mum used to tell me to never boil my cabbages twice, and I think it's artistically valid. While I do find myself on similar themes in my books, I try not to repeat myself, and that's something which is all too easy to do in series books.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.