Quotes from Roald Dahl

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

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

Two rights don't equal a left.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

A life is made up of a great number of small incidents, and a small number of great ones.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.

All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

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

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

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.

Give us strength, oh Lord, to let our children starve.

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

But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.

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.

Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.