If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.
If I learned anything in this life, I’ve learned that you can’t cling on.
He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.
That’s what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don’t tell her. You have to remember always that she’s the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.
I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.
I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling’s The Elephant’s Child and The Jungle Book. Deep down, I’ve always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.
There’s room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world – that’s what I think.
Blind terror drove me on, with my flying stirrups whipping me into a frenzy. With no rider to carry I reached the kneeling riflemen first and they scattered as I came upon them.
I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
Everyone is interested in war, in that people don’t want it to happen. I’m much more interested in peace than in war but it’s important to understand why we fight.
A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear – which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you’ll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.
Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.
I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on ‘Aesop’s Fables,’ ‘Brothers Grimm,’ ‘La Fontaine,’ all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.
It is the child’s understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They’re still doing it today with modern technology.
Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.
As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.
Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.
Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never – pleasurable.
It’s what I’ll be singing in the morning. It won’t be God Save the Ruddy King or All Things bleeding Bright and Beautiful. It’ll be Orange and Lemons for Big Joe, for all of us.