“Never get out of bed, never go to the window, and never look behind the curtain.”
— Roald Dahl
“I’m afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.”
— Roald Dahl
“We may see a Creature with forty-nine headsWho lives in the desolate snow,And whenever he catches a cold (which he dreads)He has forty-nine noses to blow.’We may see the venomous Pink-Spotted ScrunchWho can chew up a man with one bite.It likes to eat five of them roasted for lunchAnd eighteen for its supper at night.’We may see a Dragon, and nobody knowsThat we won’t see a Unicorn there.We may see a terrible Monster with toesGrowing out of the tufts of his hair.’We may see the sweet little Biddy-Bright HenSo playful, so kind and well-bred;And such beautiful eggs! You just boil them and thenThey explode and they blow off your head.’A Gnu and a Gnocerous surely you’ll seeAnd that gnormous and gnorrible GnatWhose sting when it stings you goes in at the kneeAnd comes out through the top of your hat.’We may even get lost and be frozen by frost.We may die in an earthquake or tremor.Or nastier still, we may even be tossedOn the horns of a furious Dilemma.’But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill!Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge!Let’s go rolling and bowling and spinning untilWe’re away from old Spiker and Sponge!”
— 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
“Words’, he said, ‘is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.”
— Roald Dahl
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea.”
— Roald Dahl
“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.”
— Roald Dahl
“Children should never have baths,’ my grandmother said. ‘It’s a dangerous habit.’‘I agree, Grandmamma.”
— Roald Dahl
“Down vith children! Do them in!Boil their bones and fry their skin!Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!Offer chocs vith magic powder!Say “Eat up!” then say it louder.Crrram them full of sticky eats,Send them home still guzzling sveets.And in the morning little foolsGo marching off to separate schools.A girl feels sick and goes all pale.She yells, “Hey look! I’ve grrrown a tail!”A boy who’s standing next to herScreams, “Help! I think I’m grrrowing fur!” Another shouts, “Vee look like frrreaks!There’s viskers growing on our cheeks!”A boy who vos extremely tallCries out, “Vot’s wrong? I’m grrrowing small!”Four tiny legs begin to sprrroutFrom everybody rrround about.And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,There are no children! Only MICE!”
— Roald Dahl
“…the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks… The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.”
— 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
“The act of copulation is like that of picking the nose. It’s all right to be doing it yourself but it is a singularly unattractive spectacle for the onlooker.”
— Roald Dahl
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
— Roald Dahl
“There’s plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there’s only five of them in the whole world, and that’s all there’s ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common money. Are you a dummy?”
— Roald Dahl
“Hey, my spaghetti’s moving!” cried Mr. Twit, poking around in it with his fork.“It’s a new kind,” Mrs. Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. “It’s called Squiggly Spaghetti. It’s delicious. Eat it up while it’s nice and hot.”
— Roald Dahl
“Men were foolish and were made only so that they should die, while mountains and rivers went on for ever and did not notice the passing of time.”
— Roald Dahl
“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”
— Roald Dahl
“I’m wondering what to read next.” Matilda said. “I’ve finished all the children’s books.”
— Roald Dahl
“No one who is good can ever be ugly.”
— 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
“England once there lived a bigAnd wonderfully clever pig.To everybody it was plainThat Piggy had a massive brain.He worked out sums inside his head,There was no book he hadn’t read.He knew what made an airplane fly,He knew how engines worked and why.He knew all this, but in the endOne question drove him round the bend:He simply couldn’t puzzle outWhat LIFE was really all about.What was the reason for his birth?Why was he placed upon this earth?His giant brain went round and round.Alas, no answer could be found.Till suddenly one wondrous night.All in a flash he saw the light.He jumped up like a ballet dancerAnd yelled, “By gum, I’ve got the answer!””They want my bacon slice by slice”To sell at a tremendous price!”They want my tender juicy chops”To put in all the butcher’s shops!”They want my pork to make a roast”And that’s the part’ll cost the most!”They want my sausages in strings!”They even want my chitterlings!”The butcher’s shop! The carving knife!”That is the reason for my life!”Such thoughts as these are not designedTo give a pig great piece of mind.Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,A pail of pigswill in his hand,And piggy with a mighty roar,Bashes the farmer to the floor…Now comes the rather grizzly bitSo let’s not make too much of it,Except that you must understandThat Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,He ate him up from head to toe,Chewing the pieces nice and slow.It took an hour to reach the feet,Because there was so much to eat,And when he finished, Pig, of course,Felt absolutely no remorse.Slowly he scratched his brainy headAnd with a little smile he said,”I had a fairly powerful hunch”That he might have me for his lunch.”And so, because I feared the worst,”I thought I’d better eat him first.”
— 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
“A dream is not needing anything. If it is a good one, it is waiting peaceably for ever until it is released and allowed to do its job. If it is a bad one, it is always fighting to get out.”
— Roald Dahl
“This allowed her two glorious hours sitting quietly by herself in a cozy corner, devouring one book after another. When she had read every single children’s book in the place, she started wandering round in search of something else.”
— Roald Dahl
“You is getting nosier than a parker.”
— Roald Dahl
“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
— Roald Dahl
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”
— 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
“There are many other little refinements too, Mr. Bohlen. You’ll see them all when you study the plans carefully. For example, there’s a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There’ll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose.”Where?”In the ‘word-memory’ section,” he said, epexegetically.”
— Roald Dahl
“Don’t gobblefunk around with words.”
— Roald Dahl