Top 201 Quotes & Sayings by Roald Dahl - Page 2

A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.

By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.

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.

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

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.

The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful.

If I were a headmaster, I would get rid of the history teacher and get a chocolate teacher instead and my pupils would study a subject that affected all of them.

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.

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.

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.

Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don't know how awful it is unti you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.

If I had my way, I'd remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.

If you are good life is good.

The matter with human beans," the BFG went on, "is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles.

Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror, 1087 William the Second. Such things are not going to affect one?s life...but 1932 the Mars Bar and 1936 Maltesers and 1937 the Kit Kat - these dates are milestones in history and should be seared into the memory of every child in the country.

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

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.

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

Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable.

Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!

The Alexander Technique works... I recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who has neck pains or back pain.

Candy is dandy but liqueur is quicker.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

When you're old enough to write a book for children, by then you'll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you're an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

There is no place I know that compares to pure imagination.

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. Brian Sibley: Or brains even? Oh gosh, yes, brains is one of the least. You can be a lovely person without brains, absolutely lovely. Kindness - that simple word. To be kind - it covers everything, to my mind. If you're kind that's it.

There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we usually get what we want—or near enough.

...the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.

I regard each sentence as a little wheel... Now and again I try to put a really big one next to a very small one in such a way that the big one, turning slowly, will make the small one spin so fast that it hums. Very tricky, that.

Life is more fun if you play games.

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.

I asked my mum, who's a very clever psychotherapist, and she says that kids love stories about death; they need it, they need to have stories that deal with death and explain it, as a place to put their fears.

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.

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

Titchy little snapperwhippers like you should not be higgling around with an old sage and onions who is hundreds of years more than you.

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.

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.

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

It is most unlikely. But--here comes the big "but"--not impossible.

Come right up close to me and I will show you something wonderful.

I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!

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

The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.

Meanings is not important, said the BFG. I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.

A BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!

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

All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.

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?

There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity; maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.

A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. 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've heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true. -Grandpa Joe

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.

Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!

Bunkum and tummyrot! You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he'd said 'What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?' He wouldn't even have started.

All you do is to look / At a page in this book / Because that's where we always will be. / No book ever ends / When it's full of your friends / The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.