Quotes from Roald Dahl

...there are no secrets unless you keep them to yourself, and this was the greatest secret I had ever had to keep in my life so far.

To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.

'Dexter' is a very well-oiled machine; it's just a great show and great to be part of.

I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.

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

What a fortunate fellow I am, I kept telling myself. Nobody has ever had such a lovely time as this!

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.

I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.

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!

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.

But it is impossible to replace a person one has loved to distraction.

Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.

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.

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.

I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.

I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.