English - Author | October 5, 1947 - March 2, 2015
I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.
Mal Peet
GreatFictionHistoricalGenre
I used to play all the time. I would play football when it was light and read when it was dark.
TimeLightFootballDarkPlayUsed
It was weird - writing is a stupid thing to do. I come up here in the morning to a pleasant room in the roof of my house and imagine I'm a black South American football superstar; then I have to imagine I'm a female pop celebrity who's pregnant. It's a completely mad way to spend your time.
MorningTimeFootballWritingStupid
Writing is a form of licensed madness.
WritingMadnessFormLicensed
I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.
PeopleYoungWriteLovelyWorking
It's a nonsense because, as we all know, there are brilliant 15-year-old readers and hopeless 50-year-old readers. All that categorisation is a matter of bookshop shelves rather than literary categories, I think.
ThinkKnowHopelessMatterBrilliant
Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.
WorkHistoryFreeLearnPassionate
I find myself, by happy accident, writing 'Young Adult' fiction. However, I dislike such categories.
MyselfHappyWritingFindYoung
I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which 'target' them.
I AmFeelTargetWillTryWrite
The very provision of benches by the council or the corporation acknowledges the human need to be private in public, to be conspicuously idle, to have nothing better to do.
BetterNothingHumanIdleNeedVery
In my seaside town, there is a plethora of benches, each one bearing a little brass plate commemorating a deceased occupant. You sit with ghosts.
YouGhostsLittleSitPlateTown
Sex and death, the magnetic poles of fiction, attract us children's writers no less than adult authors, but we have to be more leery of their pull.
ChildrenDeathSexMoreFictionUs
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