Margaret Mahy Quotes

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing's as eternal as the dishes.

I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.

I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another.

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can "take over" as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice.

Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.

When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.

It changes you for ever, but you are changing for ever anyway.

Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too.

I'm the Beast. You're the Beauty," he said. "It's all a story, isn't it?

Canadians are Americans with no Disneyland.

I, personally, have found reading a continual support to writing.

I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child.

I don't think I prefer writing for one age group above another. I am just as pleased with a story which I feel works well for very small children as I do with a story for young adults.

Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.

I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.

Family!... You might just as well celebrate battle, murder and sudden death.

I know things are unbearable but in spite of that we have to bear them.

There's a lot of things you can put up with, as long as you're not related to them.

Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored

Fear can give you urgent wings.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.

In a way, the characters often do take over.

Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.

a man who builds a house never really dies.

It’s so dark - as if all the lights are just there to make the other places seem darker.