Mem Fox

My mother was a very difficult woman to please. She was the sort of woman who thought that if I were praised I would get above myself.

My Mother was a very wild Australian woman. When we were in Africa she could kill a snake with one blow from a crow bar, which she kept at the back door.

I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.

Putting babies as young as two weeks into child care for the first year of their life, for 60 hours a week, will cause their brains damage.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa.

I have very little patience with children.

I think that my favourite animal is a baby possum, or a joey. The face of a really little joey is so divine - so, so gorgeous.

You're not lonely when you're teaching, you're not quiet, you're laughing most of the time, you're having a wonderful time interacting with young people. It's the best fun in the world.

I don't know why some people have children at all if they know that they can only take a few weeks off work.