Michael Morpurgo Quotes - Page 2

Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the literature they read must reflect that. Otherwise we're just entertaining them to pass the time.

cause when there's life there's still hope

That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.

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

I don't want to be separate from something that's important to me.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.

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?

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.

My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.

This one isn’t just any old horse. 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? I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

But just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better.

I tell you, my friends,’ he said one day. ‘I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It’s the others that are mad, but they don’t know it. They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different colour uniform and speaks a different language? And it’s me they call mad!

I spend months, sometimes years, doing what I call dreamtime, weaving it together inside my head. But when I actually feel that the egg of my story is ready to hatch, then I can write it in three months. Then I know the landscape and the people well and from the inside, but I don't necessarily know where the story is going to take us.

There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.

We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's The Elephant's Child and The Jungle Book. Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.

But I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.

What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.

I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.

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

Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.

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.

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.