Michael Rosen > Quotes

“This is me being sad.
Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.”
― Michael Rosen

“... it's impossible to write the whole, true story of anything. We always leave things out. We quite often put things in. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try not to, we change things. We tell the story in our own way, which might not be the same way someone else would tell it.”
― Michael Rosen, Fantastic Mr. Dahl

“dignity” is a term for, as we would now put it, something’s intrinsic value—the value that it has by occupying its appropriate place within God’s creation,”
― Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning

“I think that a childhood can sometimes last a lifetime.”
― Michael Rosen, Fantastic Mr. Dahl

“Someone said to me,
We’re all the same age
but at different times.

I do the maths.
He’s right.”
― Michael Rosen, 各种各样的爱（”Nice爷爷”迈克尔·罗森重磅新作！青年入狱，中年丧子，万年感染新冠，但他依旧笑对人生！阅读本书时你会哭完又放声大笑！此时此刻，我们比任何时刻都更需要爱）

“Accepting that nothing is ever perfect, but that’s no reason to be dissatisfied. The world is imperfect, we are imperfect, what we do is imperfect. But at some point, if you want to survive, we have to find ways to not let that feeling grind us down. Trying to do small things well, and often, might be one way out of the hole.”
― Michael Rosen, Good Days: An A-Z of Hope and Happiness

“Dignity is something that all human beings have in common. We are all (all of us who have attained the “age of reason,” that is) subject to its demands, whatever place in society we may happen to occupy, and it is this that gives us our inalienable inner value.”
― Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning

“The most Frenchified ways of speaking and writing English belong in the main to those uses of language which are to do with ruling, making and administering laws, the expression of ideas and religion, and most literature. The least Frenchified ways of speaking and writing belong in the main to those uses of language which are to do with the activities and ideas of the labouring classes and their domestic life, of small-time shopkeepers and lowly officials like sextons.”
― Michael Rosen, Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

“Out of bedrooms and wards
long lines of the dead walk towards you
asking you,
‘Who were you to decide
that our innings was over?
Who gave you the umpire’s white coat
and upraised finger?’
Did you think we would never speak
from the graves you gave us?”
― Michael Rosen

“Where is sad? Sad is anywhere. It comes along and finds you.
When is sad? Sad is any time. It comes along and finds you.
Who is sad? Sad is anyone. It comes along and finds you.”
― Michael Rosen, Michael Rosen's Sad Book

“*click* Noice”
― Michael Rosen, The Hypnotiser

“It's my 'One Good Thing Principle.' It goes like this: try to do one thing every day that makes you proud. It can be very small, like shopping for what you want to eat, paying a bill, learning a song, going for a walk, cooking something nice, helping someone, organising something - anything. Then, as you go to sleep, fix your mind on it. Just focus on that one good thing so that the bad things, the ones that make you feel scared or fed up, don't crowd your mind. Allow yourself to be proud of it. Allow yourself to say to yourself, 'I did that.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“The opposite of play are things like taking orders and following routines without knowing why.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“A sieve is a thing with holes in. Nearly everything has holes in, eventually.”
― Michael Rosen, Uncle Gobb and the Green Heads

“People, buildings, countryside, weather - it's all changing all the time. There comes a point where you can ask yourself whether you want to change too, or not.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“We all encounter minor challenges that can hit us surprisingly hard.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“A’ STARTS ITS life in around 1800 BCE. Turn our modern ‘A’ upside down and you can see something of its original shape. Can you see an ox’s head with its horns sticking up in the air? If so, you can see the remains of this letter’s original name, ‘ox’, or ‘aleph’ in the ancient Semitic languages.”
― Michael Rosen, Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

“Sometimes, you might even change the outcome. But even if that's not always possible, there is power in the process.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“And another thing: because she and my father were very ideological people, always doing things from the body of principle and dogma of the Communist Party, there was a time when I thought that italic writing was Communist. It’s not.”
― Michael Rosen

“Deep inside his brain, something had made him realise that it was Malcolm (and now his friend too, who had been so stupid as to join with Malcolm in this whole stupid, stupid, stupid business), who stood in his way.”
― Michael Rosen, Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed

“Get through one day and then on to the next. One day at a time. One day after another.”
― Michael Rosen, One Day: A True Story of Survival in the Holocaust

“My mum said to me and my brother, 'Don't crumble your bread or roll in the soup'. I said, 'I don't want to roll in my soup'. Then she said, 'Eat up, Michael'. and my brother said, 'I don't want to eat up Michael'.”
― Michael Rosen, The Hypnotiser

“Play is about you doing things because they amuse you. I think of play as 'trial and error without fear of failure.' The opposite of play are things like taking orders and following routines without knowing why.”
― Michael Rosen, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

“We can't go over it, we can't under it. Oh no! We have to go through it.”
― Michael Rosen, We're Going on a Bear Hunt

“Paint over Mickey Mouse 

Burn Where the Wild Things Are

Pulverise the lego 

Set fire to the Christmas tree star.

Seize all the teddies 

Bury every skipping rope

Paint the walls dark brown 

Abolish all hope.”
― Michael Rosen

“While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day, I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay. I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise, Oh, I discovered a   *     *   right before my eyes, Oh, I discovered a   *     *    right before my eyes. I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king, I took it to a guy I know who’d buy most anything But this is what he hollered at me as I walked in his shop: Oh, get out of here with that   *     *   before I call a cop… I turned around and got right out, a-runnin’ for my life, And then I took it home with me to give it to my wife, But this is what she hollered at me as I walked in the door: Oh, get out of here with that   *     *   and don’t come back no more… I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet A hobo who was looking for a handout on the street.”
― Michael Rosen, Michael Rosen's Book of Very Silly Poems

“In the early years of the nineteenth century, Jews sought equal rights in the German principalities. Part of the deal was that they would take on German names in their daily affairs. This had its price – quite literally; Jews had to buy these new names when some couldn’t afford to, and they were sometimes given derogatory, mocking or even obscene names: ‘Ochsenschwanz’ – ‘oxtail’ – with the tail being lewdly ambiguous; ‘Hinkediger’ – ‘hunchback’; ‘Kaufpisch’ – ‘sell-piss’.”
― Michael Rosen, Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

“Deep down where I don't know, deep down inside, there's a place... so sad. Such a sad, sad place. Sometimes it fills up, and it fills up, and it fills up, and overflows in my eyes, and all of me is... so sad. Such a sad, sad place.”
― Michael Rosen, The Hypnotiser

“Because to experiment is to do something new. It’s to discover something in the world around us. It’s to discover something about yourself. And a big discovery, or it may be a reminder, is that we don’t have to be passive receivers of what the world throws at us. We can take any part of the world and experiment with it, see what happens if.”
― Michael Rosen, Good Days: An A-Z of Hope and Happiness

“He’s my big brother Sylvest. WHAT’S HE GOT? He’s got a row of forty medals ‘cross his chest. BIG CHEST! Don’t push, don’t shove, plenty of room for you and me. He’s got an arm like a leg. BIG LEG! And a punch that’d sink a battleship, BIG SHIP! Takes all the army and the navy To put the wind up SYLVEST! Traditional, collected by Michael Rosen”
― Michael Rosen, Michael Rosen's Book of Very Silly Poems