Malorie Blackman Quotations

I don't believe in regrets. There are a few things I'd do differently, but I can't go back in time and redo them, however much I might wish to. All I can do is learn from past mistakes and move forward.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

I suppose I've always lived in my own head. I didn't discover boys till sixth form. Then suddenly it was, 'Oh! Boys!'

I remember going into a bookshop, and the only book I saw with a black child on the cover was 'A Thief in the Village' by James Berry, and I thought, 'Is this still the state of publishing?' Then I thought, 'Either I can whine about it or try to do something about it.'

What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens - I wanted teenagers to come up with their own creative responses to literature - using books themselves as a starting point.

I believe each individual can have a say and make a difference.

I loved reading when I grew up but did feel totally invisible because I couldn't see myself and my life reflected in the books I was reading.

A good book is a good book. End of story.

You can have all the talent in the world, but without determination, you won't get very far.

A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.

I remember, when I was at school, we would have a 10-minute storytelling session where we'd all sit on the floor cross-legged, and the teacher would read. It became something we all really looked forward to. That was part of the reason I grew to love stories.

I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society.

A film of my life would never happen!

Any anxieties publishers have about putting a child on the front cover of a book who isn't white is very old fashioned.

Being the Children's Laureate has been educational, sometimes hectic, but most of all, great fun.

Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.

Books teach children to see the world through the eyes of others and empathise with others. It's about the story.

Children find prescriptive reading lists daunting, and they are a dangerous thing to have in schools.

I hope to instill, in every child I meet, my love and enthusiasm for reading and stories.

I think fan fiction is the way most writers start, and the same goes for music and design.

I think what we need, especially in publishing, is more commissioning editors and editors who are people of colour.

I wanted to have a body of work behind me before I wrote about racism.

I work in my attic, and the view is next door's chimney stack.

I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well.

I'm a voice for children's books and children's reading.

When I was a child, we used to look forward to the end of the day when we would hear another ten minutes of a story.

There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children, and that's why fiction needs to be diverse.

When I was a teenager, reading for me was as normal, as unremarkable as eating or breathing. Reading gave flight to my imagination and strengthened my understanding of the world, the society I lived in, and myself. More importantly, reading was fun, a way to live more than one life as I immersed myself in each good book I read.

Shakespeare's 'Othello' was inspired by Cinthio's 'A Moorish Captain'; his 'Hamlet' came from Saxo Grammaticus's 'Amleth.'

I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget cuts. In certain political quarters, there is a refusal to see that our public library service needs active protection.

If a child wants to read 'Twilight' over Middlemarch, they should be encouraged - the important thing is to get them reading in the first place.

History should belong to all of us, and it needs to include people from different cultural backgrounds. Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant to children, who could then become disenchanted with education.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

We need more people working in the publishing industry itself who are people of colour.

I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.

What I'm trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that's wonderful; if you don't, that's wonderful as well.

When life knocks you down, keep getting up.

When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.

What I would like to do is make sure every primary school child has a library card, so where parents don't get their children library cards, we'll see if we can get schools to step in and make sure that every child has one.

What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place.

We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?

Book sales and teens reading is always a fantastic thing, but we should also be celebrating and consuming the huge wealth of U.K. and U.K.-based writing and illustrating talent. Authors such as Charlie Higson, Darren Shan, Holly Smale, Tanya Byrne, Catherine Johnson, Sophie Mckenzie, to name but a few.

I started reading seriously at seven or eight, books about myths and legends, the Narnia series. By the time I was 11, I had read all the children's books in my local library, so I moved on to 'Jane Eyre.' What I loved about Jane Eyre was that she didn't rely on her looks but her character. She had a spirit nobody could break.

The worst thing about being the laureate has been the attitude of a tiny minority of adults who haven't liked some of the things I'm supposed to have said and who have used it as an opportunity to be verbally abusive and nasty, but I haven't let it rule my world!

Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this creative spark is left to flicker precariously and sometimes fade entirely.

I try to widen the horizons of every child I meet, and part of that is promoting diverse forms, be it graphic novels, stories told in a narrative voice, or more translated books, as well as more diverse writers and more diverse characters.

The best thing about being Children's Laureate has definitely been all the children and teens I've met.

I'm one of the few adults lucky enough to love their job. And when you've got bills to pay, you get on with it! I like challenges.

In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.

I personally, as a teenager, didn't like books I felt were trying to preach to me... I did not believe in happy endings. I wanted to read books which reflected life as I thought I knew it.

I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren't any.'

I subscribe to the online Urban Dictionary's definition of nerd: 'one whose IQ exceeds his weight'. I'm also keen on the same Urban Dictionary's definition of geek: 'the person you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult'. I happily proclaim myself a book nerd/reading geek and proud of it.

I read a lot of highly unsuitable books for an 11-year-old. I was desperate to read as widely as possible. I thought, 'There are so many places I am never going to get the chance to visit, but I can if I read them.' And I did. I could go anywhere in the world - and off it - by reading.

Children will go with any story as long as it's good, but white adults sometimes think that if a black child's on the cover, it is perhaps not for them.

I didn't even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn't afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local library reading as much as I could and getting out as many books as I could.

And things go unsaid soon get forgotten

The status quo is never news, only challenges to it.

So why did you want to kiss me?" "We're friends aren't we?" Callum shrugged. I relaxed into a smile. "Of course we are." "And if you can't kiss your friends who can you kiss?" Callum smiled.

Boys don't cry, but men do.

He pulls the hood over my head. I try to pull back. I'm not trying to run away. I just want to see her... One last time...

D'you ever wonder what it would be like if our positions were reversed?' I ask. At Jack's puzzled look I continue. 'If we whites were in charge instead of you Crosses?' 'Can't say it's ever crossed my mind,' Jack shrugs. 'I used to think about it a lot,' I sigh. 'Dreams of living in a world with no more discrimination, no more prejudice, a fair police force, an equal justice system, equality of education, equality of life, a level playing field...

I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it's not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself?

Why was it that when noughts committed criminal acts, the fact that they were noughts was always pointed out? The banker was a Cross. The newsreader didn't even mention it.

Who did it, Sephy?' She repeated. 'Who beat you up? 'Cause whoever it was, I'll kill them.

But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like 'love thy neighbor' and ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If nothing else, wasn't the message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves 'God's chosen' and still treat us the way they did?

Mrs Bawden yanked me away from the table and dragged me across the food hall. I tried to twist away from her, but she had a grip like a python on steroids.

I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit.

Don't you know that boys don't cry?' Adam grinned. 'Shall I tell you something I've only recently discovered,' I replied, not attempting to hide the tears rolling down my face and not the least bit ashamed of them. 'Boys don't cry, but real men do.

You're a Nought and I'm a Cross and there's nowhere for us to be, nowhere for us to go where we'd be left in peace...That's why I started crying. That's why I couldn't stop. For all the things we might've had and all the things we're never going to have.

I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.

That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.

She stays lost in the middle of her own world somewhere. We can’t get in and she doesn’t come out. Not often anyway, and certainly not for any length of time. But her mind takes her to somewhere kind, I think, to judge by the peaceful, serene look on her face most of the time.

The point is, you have family and friends who love you. You have a world out there just waiting for you to conquer it. You have a life that will be anything you make it. That's the point.

And just like that, I'd been assessed and judged. Nurse Fashoda didn't know the first thing about me but she'd taken one look at my face and now she reckoned she knew my whole life story -- what had gone before and what was yet to come.

People are people. We'll always find a way to mess up, doesn't matter who's in charge.

I wish... I wish he wasn't quite so ashamed of me. And if he could stop feeling so ashamed of himself, then maybe we might stand a chance.

Did you love Melanie?" asked Adam unexpectedly. There was no pause before I shook my head. "That's a shame," said Adam. "Why?" "Well, someone as special as your daughter should've been... made with love.

Five years off my life... I wondered with a wry smile, would people be immortal if they didn't have kids?

Sometimes the things you're convinced you don't want turn out to be the thing you need the most in this world.

The truth isn't going to bend itself to suit you.

Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall’ - Lynette McGregor

Because my mum and dad brought me up to believe that people are different but equal. And that I should treat everyone, no matter who, with the same respect I'd like to be shown.

One of us... One of them... One of us... One of them... A rhythm playing like train wheels on a circular track -- never ending but going nowhere.

When did we stop being people, being human?

I suppose it doesn't occur to you that I can think the system just as unjust as you do.

Jude's rule number five: Never get to close to anyone or anything that you can't walk away at a moment's notice if you have to. When you have to.

Jude's fourth law: Caring equals vulnerability. Never show either.

The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we would want to hear.

A backup plan means somewhere in my head, I think I might fail and that word is not in my vocabulary. Plus I'm too talented to fail.

Dear God, please let him have heard me. Please. Please. If you're up there. Somewhere.

Never, ever allow yourself to feel. Feelings kill.

But remember this if nothing else: I love you more than there are words or stars. I love you more than there are thoughts and feelings. I love you more than there are seconds or moments gone or to come. I love you.