Nina Bawden Quotes

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.

Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general.

I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.

I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.