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.

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.

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.

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

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

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.