Quotes from Roald Dahl

The romance, alas, waned and withered but the quiche lived on.

This Giant had some sort of magic in his legs.

It was all this, I think, that made me begin to have doubts about religion and even about God. If this person, I kept telling myself, was one of God's chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business.

There was something coming up the street on the opposite side. It was something black . . . Something tall and black . . . Something very tall and very black and very thin. Who?

The Trunchbull" is no match for Matilda!

I is THE BIG FRIENDLY GIANT! I is the BFG. What is your name?

I is telling you once before,' he said quietly, 'that I is never having a chance to go to school. I is full of mistakes. They is not my fault. I do my best. You is a lovely little girl, but please remember that you is not exactly Miss Knoweverything yourself.' 'I'm sorry,' Sophie said. 'I really am. It is very rude of me to keep correcting you.

The children and their parents were too flabber-gasted to speak. They were staggered. They were dumbfounded. They were bewildered and dazzled. They were completely bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing. They simply stood and stared.

She might even — and this will make you jump — she might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment.

Poppyrot and pigwash!

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 — and here comes the big "but" — it is not impossible.

My Great Glass Elevator is ready for anything! In we go! Into the breach, dear friends, into the breach!

The Giant ran on and on. But now a curious change took place in his way of running.

To support these ladies in the manner to which they are accustomed, the men must work like slaves, which is of course precisely what they are.

There are many of these stories going around, these wonderful wishful thinking dreamworld inventions of the unhappy male, but most of them are too fatuous to be worth repeating, and far too fruity to be put down on paper. There is one, however, that seems to be superior to the rest, particularly as it has the merit of being true.

The man had a way of making her feel that she was altogether a rather remarkable woman, a person of subtle and exotic talents, fascinating beyond measure; and what a very different thing that was from the dentist husband at home who never succeeded in making her feel that she was anything but a sort of eternal patient, someone who dwelt in the waiting room, silent among the magazines, seldom if ever nowadays to be called in to suffer the finicky precise ministrations of those clean pink hands.

I find that just a little hard to believe,' Sophie said. 'I'll bet you is also finding it hard to believe in quogwinkles

no one had really believed such an enormous thing would ever get off the ground without blowing up.

Whereupon the three men all shook hands with one another and swore a solemn oath that they would not go back to their farms until the fox was caught.

on with my mouse- training, but I watched them for a while longer through

A petrol engine is sheer magic," he said to me once. "Just imagine being able to take a thousand different bits of metal . . . and if you fit them all together in a certain way . . . and then if you feed them a little oil and petrol . . . and if you press a little switch . . . suddenly those bits of metal will all come to life . . . and they will purr and hum and roar . . . they will make the wheels of a motor-car go whizzing round at fantastic speeds . . .

frozen with fright. This was the witching hour all right. The tall black figure was coming her way. It was keeping very close to the houses across the street, hiding in the shadowy places where there was no moonlight.

My mother's chin was up and she was staring down at him along the full length of her nose. It was a fearsome thing, this frosty-nosed stare of my mother's. Most people go to pieces completely when she gives it to them. I once saw my own headmistress begin to stammer and simper like an idiot when my mother gave her a really foul frosty-noser. But the little man on the pavement with the umbrella over his head didn't bat an eyelid.

He was smiling now, and a sort of golden glow of pleasure was spreading over his round pink face. I saw his tongue come out to lick the white moustache, as though searching for one last drop of that precious whisky.