A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.