Roald Dahl

“When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants - and DESERVES - is a parent who is SPARKY!”

“Here it is,' Nigel said.Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY. That spells difficulty.'How perfectly ridiculous!' snorted Miss Trunchbull. 'Why are all these women married?”

“Fiona has the same glacial beauty of an iceburg, but unlike the iceburg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.”

“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.”

“Obscurity is never a virtue.”

“Perhaps it's chasing me. But I don't think it will ever catch me because I am moving fast.”

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

“The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years. Roald Dahl”

“My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.”

“Poor Earthworm,' the Ladybird said, whispering in James's ear. 'He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy.”

“Well not exactly," the father said."Nobody could do that. but it didn't take me long...”

“The little pig began to prayBut Wolfie blew his house away.He shouted, "Bacon, Pork, and Ham!Oh what a lucky wolf I am!"And though he ate the pig quite fast,He carefully kept the tail till last.”

“Oh where, oh where had Snow White gone?She'd found it easy, being prettyTo hitch a ride into the city.”

“Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.My Prince! She thought. He chops off heads!How could I marry anyoneWho does that sort of thing for fun?The Prince cried, "Who's this dirty slut?Off with her nut! Off with her nut!”

“There are many other little refinements too, Mr. Bohlen. You'll see them all when you study the plans carefully. For example, there's a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There'll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose."Where?"In the 'word-memory' section," he said, epexegetically.”

“There's nothin' you can get from a book that you can't get from a television fastah!" -Harry Wormwood”

“Did you know", Matilda said suddenly, "that the heart of a mouse beats at the rate of six hundred and fifty times a second?"I did not," Miss Honey said smiling. "How absolutely fascinating. Where did you read that?"In a book from the library," Matilda said. "And that means it goes so fast that you can't even hear the separate beats. It must sound like a buzz."It must," Miss Honey said.”

“You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck."Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.”

“My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?""I don't mind at all" I said.It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.”

“I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony.”

“If you are good life is good.”

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it”

“England once there lived a bigAnd wonderfully clever pig.To everybody it was plainThat Piggy had a massive brain.He worked out sums inside his head,There was no book he hadn't read.He knew what made an airplane fly,He knew how engines worked and why.He knew all this, but in the endOne question drove him round the bend:He simply couldn't puzzle outWhat LIFE was really all about.What was the reason for his birth?Why was he placed upon this earth?His giant brain went round and round.Alas, no answer could be found.Till suddenly one wondrous night.All in a flash he saw the light.He jumped up like a ballet dancerAnd yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!""They want my bacon slice by slice"To sell at a tremendous price!"They want my tender juicy chops"To put in all the butcher's shops!"They want my pork to make a roast"And that's the part'll cost the most!"They want my sausages in strings!"They even want my chitterlings!"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!"That is the reason for my life!"Such thoughts as these are not designedTo give a pig great piece of mind.Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,A pail of pigswill in his hand,And piggy with a mighty roar,Bashes the farmer to the floor…Now comes the rather grizzly bitSo let's not make too much of it,Except that you must understandThat Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,He ate him up from head to toe,Chewing the pieces nice and slow.It took an hour to reach the feet,Because there was so much to eat,And when he finished, Pig, of course,Felt absolutely no remorse.Slowly he scratched his brainy headAnd with a little smile he said,"I had a fairly powerful hunch"That he might have me for his lunch."And so, because I feared the worst,"I thought I'd better eat him first.”

“I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by Mexicans.”

“Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.”

“It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”

“Words," he said, "is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.”

“What I mean and what I say is two different things," the BFG announced rather grandly.”

“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. 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...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”

“I therefore invite you all," Mr Fox went on, 'to stay here with me for ever.'For ever!' they cried. 'My goodness! How marvellous!' And Rabbit said to Mrs Rabbit, 'My dear, just think! We're never going to be shot again in our lives!'We will make,' said Mr Fox, 'a little underground village, with streets and houses on each side - seperate houses for Badgers and Moles and Rabbits and Weasels and Foxes. And every day I will go shopping for you all. And every day we will eat like kings.'The cheering that followed this speech went on for many minutes.”

“Life is more fun if you play games.”

“I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.”

“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.”

“You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.”

“Mr. Wonka: "Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"Mr. Wonka: "He lived happily ever after.”

“I shall never have a bath again," I said. "Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child." It was at times like these that I loved my grandmother 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.”

“Do you like vegetables?" Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food. "You is trying to change the subject," the Giant said sternly. "We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”

“We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it.”

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”

“I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.”

“It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”

“Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.”

“I've heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true.-Grandpa Joe”

“Two rights don't equal a left.”

“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.”

“Mr. Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And, now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.”

“It wasn't raindrops at all. It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing first onto the seagulls and then onto the peach itself, while the poor travelers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of- the peach stem, the silk strings, anything they could find- and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them, bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing and swashing and swirling and surging and whirling and gurgling and gushing and rushing and rushing, and it was like being pinned down underneath the biggest waterfall in the world and not being able to get out.”

“I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

“She might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment. Look carefully at that teacher. Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Don't let that put you off. It could be part of cleverness.I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But—here comes the big "but"—not impossible.”