If reading becomes a bore, mental death is on the way. Children taught to read by tedious mechanical means rapidly learn to skim over the dull text w…

- Joan Aiken

Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.

- Joan Aiken

Stories ought not to be just little bits of fantasy that are used to wile away an idle hour; from the beginning of the human race stories have been u…

- Joan Aiken

The first book that a child reads has a colossal impact.

- Joan Aiken

As cows need milking and sweet peas need picking, so writers must continually exercise their mental muscles by a daily stint.

- Joan Aiken

A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marv…

- Joan Aiken

Sudden wealth was the great insulator, second only to sudden bereavement.

- Joan Aiken

Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It's a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it.

- Joan Aiken

Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their mi…

- Joan Aiken