Margaret Mahy Quotes

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up.

Our kids are in their twenties now, which is a wonderful time.

I have four kids; three girls and a boy. The oldest girl is 13, and has her own social life now, so there's a bit of begrudging cooperation there. It's tough.

My daughter, Anna, is almost 15, and my son, Ben, is almost 10.

I am now at an age when they wanted me to play her mother.

I have a daughter, she's twenty years old.

My children are now all grown. Some are in their 60s. But when they call and I answer the phone, they say, 'How are you?' And before I can answer, they ask, 'Is Mother there?'

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

My kids are not that interested in my movie career, by the way. My son, in particular, never talks about it. He just wants me as his dad.

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

I'm still raising kids myself, so I don't feel like a grandpa.

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

I do think you are supposed to go through wars with your child because otherwise the tearing apart that has to happen when they go off to lead their own life would be unbearable.

I don't have any children; I have four middle-aged people.

It's fun to play mom. Last I knew I was playing a 17-year-old who graduated.

I have four grown children and two tiny grandchildren.

When you have little girls, you're the coolest person in the world. I know at some point that's going to end; in their adolescence I'll become the opposite of that, especially if I'm parked outside a high school party.

Once you have a child, you change so much along the way, you don't even recognize yourself by the time they're ready to move out!

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.

I don't know anybody that has a teenage son or daughter who at some point hasn't been like, 'God, I hate them' just under their breath. It's not meant to be literal. It's funny.

And getting older, what's happening is, I play only mothers.

Childhood has definitely been invented, hasn't it? I think that's because people had children later, and we appreciate and cherish childhood a lot more.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

I'm proud of my family, very proud - I have ten grandchildren, four children, and one wife.

Perhaps it's because I am reading romance differently than I did when I was younger, but I like my characters older. Grounded in reality. And nothing is more real than kids.