Roald Dahl
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.Collection: Freedom
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.Collection: Men
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.Collection: Fear
I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.
I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.
I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.
My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.
All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.
The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all.
'Dexter' is a very well-oiled machine; it's just a great show and great to be part of.
The fine line between roaring with laughter and crying because it's a disaster is a very, very fine line. You see a chap slip on a banana skin in the street and you roar with laughter when he falls slap on his backside. If in doing so you suddenly see he's broken a leg, you very quickly stop laughing and it's not a joke anymore.
I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.
I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.
Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.
I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.
When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.
Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.
Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.
If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.
All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.
Did they preach one thing and practice another, these men of God?
Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
I go down to my little hut, where it's tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.
I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.
Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.
The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. It was a great comfort.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.
Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.
Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.
When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.
When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales.
Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.
If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.Collection: Inspirational
Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.Collection: World
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.Collection: Inspirational
Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.Collection: Love
I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.Collection: Kindness
If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.Collection: Book
We make realities out of our dreams and dreams out of our realities. We are the dreamers of the dream.Collection: Dream
A life is made up of a great number of small incidents, and a small number of great ones.Collection: Small Numbers
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.Collection: Beauty
Kindness - that simple word. To be kind - it covers everything, to my mind. If you're kind that's it.Collection: Kindness
There is no place I know that compares to pure imagination.Collection: Imagination
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to beCollection: Life
Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.Collection: Philosophical
You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.Collection: Ifs