Quotes from Michael Morpurgo

good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons

We fought back with our music; it was the only weapon we had.

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about?

The crowd were on Fathers side most of them anyways. Everyone loves a loser I thought and there was tears coming in my eyes and I couldn't stop them neither.

Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever hot hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow's eggs, he didn't want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn't go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of others did. It wasn't like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went.

I have no pity for them, but no hatred either

Blind terror drove me on, with my flying stirrups whipping me into a frenzy. With no rider to carry I reached the kneeling riflemen first and they scattered as I came upon them.

When you're young you can't work out the age of an adult - they're just quite old, old, or very old.

I am a story as well as a happening, and I want my story to be known

and then quite suddenly I found that I had no rider, that I had no weight on my back, and that I was alone out in front of the squadron.

When people make wars, they make refugees.

As he did so, he held out his other hand in a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, a smile lighting he worn face. 'In an hour, maybe, or two,' he said, 'we will be trying our best again each other to kill. God only knows why we do it, and I think he has maybe forgotten why. Goodbye Welshman. We have shown them, haven't we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other. That is all it needs, no?

I think I have always had a strong sense of justice, of fair play, of what is right and what is wrong.

our home should be an oasis of peace and harmony for us in a troubled world

Tonight, more than any other night, I want to feel alive.

If there's one thing I can't abide it's fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all.

Death, I discovered that day, is not frightening, because it is utterly still. And it is still because death, when it comes, is always over. There's only terror in it if you fear it and ever since my first death, Wes' death, I have never feared it. It is simply the end of a story, and if you've loved the story then it is sad. And sometimes, as it was with Wes, it is an agony of sadness.

Charlie often told me we were living on borrowed time out here. I don't want to borrow any more time. I want time to stop so that tomorrow never comes, so that dawn will never happen.

that was the only way of keeping our hopes alive, by looking beyond all we were seeing around us, and the shadow of disaster that hung over us.

but the truth is - and I am ashamed of this now - that I was far more interested in boys and bicycles, than in politics - and more in bicycles than boys, I have to say.

Secrets are lies by another name.

Why does this war have to destroy anything and everything that's fine and beautiful?

Life must not be spent always hoping, always waiting. Life is for living.