Margaret Mahy Quotes

It seems to me that in literature, books have always been answers to other books.

I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

'Anna Karenina.' I read it in college. I was so engrossed that I couldn't stop reading it and neglected all my other studies. I would go to the library even on nice warm weekends and just lock myself up. I think that was the first time that I felt transformed by a book.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary.

The books that really made an impact on me were not set in New Zealand. Some were New Zealand novels, but the New Zealandness of them was not what carried me or excited me.

I enjoy being influenced by other writers.

I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life's value if you don't see yourself as a member of the family of man.

A book can be wonderful and powerful and accessible and artful all at the same time.

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books.

For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived.

Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life.

Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.

I don't know if nature is a direct literary influence on my writing, but it is certainly important to me. I take great joy in writing about it. It is something I have taken with me from my childhood; the body exposed to the threat of the physical world and at the same time being at home in it.

Sensation is amphibious: at the same time it joins us to and divides us from things. It is the door through which we enter into things but also through which we come out of them and realize that we are not things.

Of the authors published under Ballantine's Adult Fantasy logo, only Evangeline Walton 'spoke' to me.

Man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating himself.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

Authors are influenced by everything they've ever read. If you've read widely enough, it helps you create your own mix.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

I don't see how you can write well if you're not reading well at the same time. I think the only risk is reading too many books of one 'type' in a row.