Quotes from Michael Morpurgo

Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.

There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?

The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts.

With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.

Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them.

You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.

It gives me confidence to know that what I'm writing has a veracity of its own without me having to invent it. When I'm writing fiction, I must believe it to be true, or I can see no point in it.

I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.

It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started.

Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.

When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.