Nina Bawden Quotes

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Book, Writing

  47 Copy quote

• I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

  Nina Bawden

  Survivor, Victim, Angry

  Nina Bawden (2011). “Dear Austen”, p.19, Hachette UK

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Liars, People, Tragedy

  Nina Bawden (2011). “In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography”, p.99, Hachette UK

  17 Copy quote

• All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.

  Nina Bawden

  Writing, Thieves, Tools

  10 Copy quote

• One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

  Nina Bawden

  Writing, Age, Life Is

  Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Thinking, People, Way

  "Nina's wars" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Husband, Years, People

  Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

• I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Book, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

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

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Stronger, Adults

  Interview with Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

  Nina Bawden

  Writing, May, Close Friends

  Nina Bawden (2011). “In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography”, p.99, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

• I was born in a small suburb of Ilford in a rather nasty housing estate that my mother despised. She had grown up in the country, so when the war came and I was evacuated to Wales she thought I was much better off there.

  Nina Bawden

  Country, Mother, War

  "Nina's wars" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  People, Safety, Would Be

  5 Copy quote

• I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.

  Nina Bawden

  Two, Raf, Cadets

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Husband, Shoes, Track

  "Dear Austen". Book by Nina Bawden, www.theguardian.com. 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

  Nina Bawden

  Jobs, War, Oxford

  "Nina's wars" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Book, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Thinking, People, Important

  Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.

  Nina Bawden

  Mother, Made Up Stories, Serial Killer

  Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.

  Nina Bawden

  Differences, Interesting, Feelings

  "Nina's wars" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Nina Bawden

  People, Care, Remember

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Confused, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Mother, School, Oxford

  7 Copy quote

• The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.

  Nina Bawden

  Running, Children, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Husband, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Ten thousand pounds is the legal value of a negligently taken life, of a child or a parent. A cold and somewhat mean-spirited calculation: you would do better if you slipped on a paving-stone and broke a front tooth.

  Nina Bawden

  Children, Taken, Mean

  "Dear Austen". Book by Nina Bawden, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

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