From the archive: Roald Dahl speaks to the Irish Times in 1982 about writing for children, his inventions and becoming an accidental art collector
“The fascinating thing – and I’ve never been able to understand this about a children ‘s book , a much-loved children ‘s book – is that it doesn’t stop. Yet someone like Graham Greene or Angus Wilson or Saul Bellow can write a first-rate novel, which will get a pretty big sale in hard covers the first year, when it comes out, a reasonable sale during the next couple of years and then it will go into a steady trickle, and that is literally all. I talked to Edna O’Brien some time ago. I said ‘You have lots of books out, and she said in her funny Irish accent, ‘But it’s hard to make a living from them. ‘
“Every year probably twenty first-rate novels are written in English. I think the answer lies in the fact that during that year there are no more than one or two first-rate children’s books written. And of course children read a book they like ten times; we read a novel once. Children, once they fall in love with a book, read it again and again. “
via Roald Dahl: ‘Children only read for fun; you’ve got to hold their attention’.