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"At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young."
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"I tell you, families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness."
"Don't say negative things about your spouse and children."
Explore more quotes by Margaret Mahy
"My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years."
"Ellis's understanding of himself and the world around him certainly develops because of his adventures, and part of that development comes through recognizing other people for what they are."
"When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared."
"New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications."
"By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life."
"I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been."
"It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can "take over" as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times."
"There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and "live" with the characters."
"I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child."
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