Roald Dahl Quotes

91 Sourced Quotes

Grown-ups are quirky creatures, full of quirks and secrets.

Roald Dahl
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!

Roald Dahl
I shall never have a bath again," I said. "Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child." It was at times like these that I loved my grandmother more than ever.

Roald Dahl
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.

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

Roald Dahl
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

Roald Dahl
You ignorant little slug!" the Trunchbull bellowed. "You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue!

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

Roald Dahl
Bunkum and tummyrot! You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he'd said 'What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?' He wouldn't even have started.

Roald Dahl
I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.

Roald Dahl
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.

Roald Dahl
There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity; maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.

Roald Dahl
It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.

Roald Dahl
"The matter with human beans," the BFG went on, "is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles."

Roald Dahl
I regard each sentence as a little wheel... Now and again I try to put a really big one next to a very small one in such a way that the big one, turning slowly, will make the small one spin so fast that it hums. Very tricky, that.

Roald Dahl
When you're writing, it's rather like going on a very long walk

Roald Dahl