Nina Bawden Quotes & Sayings

“I was cleaning out the pigsty at a farm in Wales, where my mother had rented a room, when the results of my final school exam were handed to me by the postman, along with the news that I had a state scholarship to Oxford. I had waited for this letter for so many weeks that I had abandoned hope, deciding that I had failed ignominiously.”

“I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.”

“All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.”

“I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.”

“People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.”

“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.”

“I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.”

“I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.”

“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.”

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