Ben Gutteridge

“There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children’s book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness… The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They’re embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.”
― Philip Pullman

“He was always inclined to read a fictitious sombreness into things when the shadows began to creep over the world and it was still too early for a cocktail.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather