Michelle Paver Quotes

Why do so many children love the idea of being snowed in or shipwrecked, of having to survive on one's own? When I was a child, I was no exception. I wanted to hunt with a bow and arrow like the Stone Age people: to skin deer and build my own shelter. And I desperately wanted a wolf. As we lived in London, my options were limited.

I used to love 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,' and I can still remember listening to them before I would fall asleep. I can remember the first ten minutes of the book perfectly, but whether I knew the rest of it was slightly more dicey.

I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.

More often than not, my reference point is not the kids or the grandkids but myself when I was that age. I remember the days at Hartranft Elementary and Stewart Junior High in Norristown.

My mother is a huge fan of my work. I told her about 'Coraline' long before the film was made, and she got the book and read it. She reminded me that when I was about five years old, I used to sit in the kitchen for hours and talk about my 'other' family in Africa, my other mother and father. I had totally forgotten that.

When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.

The books I used to love as a kid, I used to read football books - and by that I mean soccer books - stories about boys in school who started to play football and then became the captain. I'd read them cover to cover. I just got lost in them.

Growing up, I missed the whole 'Three Stooges' thing. Either they weren't on the station in my hometown, or we hadn't bought a TV set yet, or they came to town too late for me. I'm pretty sure that at the right age, I would have loved them.

I used to love playing football in high school. I played with the same guys for 10 years.

One of my grandsons used to insist, when he was only 3 or 4, that he had been born and had lived in India.

The great thing is to have been surrounded by stories all my life.

I was learning book-keeping at the age of 12, but it never stopped me from pursuing literature. Over the years, I grew to love the written word.

I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.

I love inventing interesting people and then pushing them to their absolute limits - and usually those absolute limits involve homicidal faeries, werewolves, or some other paranormal menace.

I first saw the island of Noirmoutier when I was two weeks old. I think it's probably safe to say that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time; but I grew to love it as year after year I spent holidays there at my grandparents' cottage.

I had a very happy childhood. But I was sent off to boarding school at quite a young age, this massive Victorian house that was suffocated in ivy. I think there is a part of that school in 'Heap House.'

I used to love 'Murphy Brown' as a kid. I didn't even understand half of the jokes that were going on, but I loved the character so much that they stood out.

You know, I'm trying to sometimes sit down and write some stories about my childhood and maybe one when I'm an old lady put them out like a book.

Growing up in Florida, it rained a lot, so we spent a lot of time indoors. I used to love Frogger. I got a lot of use out of that and Ms. Pac-man on my little Atari.

In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.'

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

I was born in 1969, believe it or not, so I was a child in the '70s.

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

I used to love the '20s.

People wonder why I love Africa so much. I say this is where I was born and raised. My roots are in Africa; that's were I developed.