All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.

Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.

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

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.

Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children - as long as you make them laugh as well,

My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.