Malorie Blackman

“The point is, you have family and friends who love you. You have a world out there just waiting for you to conquer it. You have a life that will be anything you make it. That's the point.”

“I work in my attic, and the view is next door's chimney stack.”

“I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget c...”

“Book sales and teens reading is always a fantastic thing, but we should also be celebrating and consuming the huge wealth of U.K. and U.K.-based writing and illustrating talent. Authors such...”

“History should belong to all of us, and it needs to include people from different cultural backgrounds. Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant to children, who could then become disenchante...”

“Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this creative spark is left to flicker precariously and sometimes fade entirely.”

“There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is...”

“I try to widen the horizons of every child I meet, and part of that is promoting diverse forms, be it graphic novels, stories told in a narrative voice, or more translated books, as well as...”

“I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well.”

“I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren...”

“When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it...”

“Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their...”

“Being the Children's Laureate has been educational, sometimes hectic, but most of all, great fun.”

“The best thing about being Children's Laureate has definitely been all the children and teens I've met.”

“The worst thing about being the laureate has been the attitude of a tiny minority of adults who haven't liked some of the things I'm supposed to have said and who have used it as an opportun...”

“I started reading seriously at seven or eight, books about myths and legends, the Narnia series. By the time I was 11, I had read all the children's books in my local library, so I moved on...”

“Shakespeare's 'Othello' was inspired by Cinthio's 'A Moorish Captain'; his 'Hamlet' came from Saxo Grammaticus's 'Amleth.'”

“I don't believe in regrets. There are a few things I'd do differently, but I can't go back in time and redo them, however much I might wish to. All I can do is learn from past mistakes and m...”

“I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and u...”

“What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens - I wanted teenagers to come up with their own crea...”