"J.K. Rowling: 'I love E Nesbit — I think she is great and I identify with the way that she writes. Her children are very real children and she was quite a groundbreaker in her day.'"
"J. K. Rowling: 'My favourite writers were E. Nesbit, C.S. Lewis, adult writers as well. I would read absolutely anything - even the back of cereal packets.'"
"J. K. Rowling: 'I've loved Hilaire Belloc ever since I read Cautionary Tales for Children when I was about 10. Verse 22 of his Dedicatory Ode has been pinned on my study wall for several years.'"
"Rowling named her daughter after Jessica Mitford. J.K. Rowling: 'Basically, [Mitford] had every single possible component you could want as a 13-year-old leftwinger.'"
"J. K. Rowling: 'Emma has the merit of having a heroine who annoys me because she is in some ways so like me, and it is the most skilfully managed mystery I've ever read.'"
". K. Rowling: 'Roddy Doyle is my favourite living writer. I love his work for many of the same reasons I like Jane Austen's. There is no sentimentality in his boundless sympathy for his characters.'"
"J. K. Rowling: 'The plot, that could have been the most worthless pornography, becomes, in Nabakov's hands, a great and tragic love story, and I could exhaust my reservoir of superlatives ...'"