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

- 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

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

since each child reads only about six hundred books in the course of childhood, each book should nourish them in some way - with new ideas, insight, …

- Joan Aiken

You may think it odd that there were three men to look after one tiny station, but the people who ran the railway knew that if you left two men toget…

- Joan Aiken