Terry Pratchett Quotes

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

My name is Jarrett Krosoczka, and I write and illustrate books for children for a living. So I use my imagination as my full-time job.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It's work, and often it's hard work.

I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.

I didn't write a book. It wasn't for self-enrichment.

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.

I was lucky enough to be a child during the renaissance of Australian children's literature, when people like Ivan Southall, Colin Thiele, Lilith Norman and Wrightson were pumping out hugely inspiring stuff.

Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself.

There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

I wrote 'I'm Me' because I was asked to write a children's book.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

I write books for all age groups - young kids, teenagers and adults - because I get a range of different ideas.

Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.

I know some children's writers write for specific children, or for the children they once were, but I never have. I just thought children might like my sort of visual humour.

Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books.

I make no claim to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children.