Roald Dahl Quotes

91 Sourced Quotes

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.

Roald Dahl
A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

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

Roald Dahl
So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.

Roald Dahl
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.

Roald Dahl
I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.

Roald Dahl
The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. It was a great comfort.

Roald Dahl
Come right up close to me and I will show you something wonderful.

Roald Dahl
But it is impossible to replace a person one has loved with distractions.

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

Roald Dahl
I have found it impossible to talk to anyone about my problems. I couldn't face the embarrassment, and anyway I lack the courage. Any courage I had was knocked out of me when I was young. But now, all of sudden I have a sort of desperate wish to tell everything to somebody.

Roald Dahl
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.

Roald Dahl
You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck. "Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.

Roald Dahl
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.

Roald Dahl
Oh where, oh where had Snow White gone? She'd found it easy, being pretty To hitch a ride into the city.

Roald Dahl
Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.

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.

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

Roald Dahl
The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it.

Roald Dahl
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.

Roald Dahl
I was already beginning to realize that the only way to conduct oneself in a situation where bombs rained down and bullets whizzed past, was to accept the dangers and all the consequences as calmly as possible. Fretting and sweating about it all was not going to help.

Roald Dahl
My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.

Roald Dahl
I is reading it hundreds of times,' the BFG said. 'And I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It is the most scrumdiddlyumptious story.' Sophie took the book out of his hand. 'Nicholas Nickleby,' she read aloud. 'By Dahl's Chickens,' the BFG said.

Roald Dahl
Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.

Roald Dahl
And when he put his mind to it, he could make his words coil themselves around and around the listener until they held her in some sort of a mild hypnotic spell.

Roald Dahl
Little Billy's mother was always telling him exactly what he was allowed to do and what he was not allowed to do. All the things he was allowed to do were boring. All the things he was not allowed to do were exciting. One of the things he NEVER NEVER was allowed to do, the most exciting of them all, was to go out through the garden gate all by himself and explore the world beyond.

Roald Dahl
Well not exactly," the father said."Nobody could do that. but it didn't take me long...

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

Roald Dahl