Nina Bawden

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.

If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars.

Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.

The train we had so confidently boarded had been speeding at almost 100 miles an hour and it had derailed. Someone, I can't remember who, showed me a newspaper photograph of the carriage we had been sitting in tilted on its side on a station platform next to a large notice that said Welcome to Potters Bar.

Adults get more confused by social worker jargon. Unlike children, they are also less likely to see two sides of an argument, and they no longer think they can make the world a better place. That can make them rather boring, I suppose.

The murder of my husband by the railways has altered the way I think about everything. I had always thought that the majority of people were decent and honourable. In the wake of the crash, what made me angry more than anything else was the realisation that this was not true. I still find it very hard to come to terms with.

Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.

There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

But I don't write about sex for today's teenagers. Or Doc Martens boots either. I'm more interested in exploring how exactly the world is run, which doesn't really change that much from one generation to another.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

I met my second husband on a bus. We looked at each other and that was it. We were both married to other people at the time and behaved badly, but we didn't seem to have any choice. We were very happy for nearly 50 years and would still be together if it wasn't for the bloody railways.