I’m not one of those people who had a burning passion for ‘Peter Pan’ all my life. Although I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the story, I didn’t carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
My mum used to tell me to never boil my cabbages twice, and I think it’s artistically valid. While I do find myself on similar themes in my books, I try not to repeat myself, and that’s something which is all too easy to do in series books. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
Would I mind if someone wrote a sequel to one of my books?’ I asked myself, and I decided that I wouldn’t, providing that the writer was respectful, had read my book first, and wasn’t drunk when doing it. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
Most of my central characters lack confidence but overcome their timidity or low self-esteem to win through in the end, so I suppose there is a kind of wish-fulfillment at work. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
It isn’t that I don’t tackle issues; it’s just that they’re secondary to giving somebody an escape route from the banal routine of everyday life. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
When people write fan-fic sequels to one of your books, it gives you a very strange feeling. It is very flattering but strange, as if the characters have come to life again without you knowing. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
Writing is writing to me. I’m incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I’ve done everything – historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I’ll write. It’s the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
Never apologise for not being someone else. You’re bound to find something you’re good at, even if it’s only writing stories. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn’t occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn’t think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
I simply don’t understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it’s lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else. Geraldine McCaughrean Read Quote
