Zitat des Tages von Nina Bawden:
At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.
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.
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.
I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.
The train we had so confidently boarded had been speeding at almost 100 miles an hour and it had derailed. Someone, I can't remember who, showed me a newspaper photograph of the carriage we had been sitting in tilted on its side on a station platform next to a large notice that said Welcome to Potters Bar.
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.
If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars.
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.
Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.
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.
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.
