I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.

All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

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.

Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.

When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales.

Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.

When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.

I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.

Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.

To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

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

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

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.

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

The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. It was a great comfort.

Did they preach one thing and practice another, these men of God?

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.

I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.

Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.

I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.

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

Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.

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.

I go down to my little hut, where it's tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.

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

The fine line between roaring with laughter and crying because it's a disaster is a very, very fine line. You see a chap slip on a banana skin in the street and you roar with laughter when he falls slap on his backside. If in doing so you suddenly see he's broken a leg, you very quickly stop laughing and it's not a joke anymore.

A little magic can take you a long way.

Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of Its made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners

We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that reverse it.

Life is more fun if you play games.

As the night gets dark let your worries fade. sleep peacefully knowing youve done all you can do for today.

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

Obscurity is never a virtue.

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it

You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he'd said 'What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?' He wouldn't even have started.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.