Morris Gleitzman

I like the idea of young readers using my stories as a sort of moral gym, where they can flex and develop their newly developed moral muscle.

I think, to be a successful author, you've got to be part recluse and part show-off.

Children know when they are being sold a sanitised version of the world, and I think that's a betrayal of the relationship between author and reader.

When I did finally live in the Dandenongs, the mountain ash forests became an important part of my life.

I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother.

Most of your life after puberty, you're either seeking to reproduce or living with the consequences of having done so. At 70, you start going back to being 11 again.

In all of my books, I'm taking them on an emotionally challenging and sometimes physically dangerous process with a bit of fun and anarchy along the way. With the power comes responsibility.

Kid's culture is often dismissed as superficial, like high fibre McDonald's, but it's so much more important than that.

The type of stories I write are about young people grappling with the biggest problems in their lives, often problems that are bigger than they're actually capable of solving.

I would never write stories with only despair and defeat and the dark side of life.

I want to help children develop strengths that allow them to feel they don't have to push things away mentally... If we 'cotton-ball' kids, it produces adults who are too scared to think for themselves and are easily manipulated.

Children have limited power to shape their own lives, but when they can experiment with possibilities through books, their optimism can be recharged and kept alive.