Alice > Alice's Quotes

“For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“It was slowly beginning to dawn upon Henry that nothing is any fun if you can get as much of it as you want. Especially money.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“A good plot is like a dream.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Don't worry,' he said. 'So long as the facts are there, I can write the story. But please,' he added, 'let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe, or a fly settled on the rim of your glasses at lunch, or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth...”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The very rich are enormously resentful of bad weather. It is the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind. Not everybody has this ability. It is a gift, and you either have it or you don’t.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“there are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks an ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side, which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“I was thrilled. I had never met a famous writer before. I examined him closely as he sat in my office. What astonished me was that he looked so ordinary. There was nothing in the least unusual about him. His face, his conversation, his eyes behind the spectacles, even his clothes were all exceedingly normal. And yet here was a writer of stories who was famous the world over. His books had been read by millions of people. I expected sparks to be shooting out of his head, or at the very least, he should have been wearing a long green cloak and a floppy hat with a wide brim. But no.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The beatings at Repton were more fierce and more frequent than anything I had yet experienced. And do not think for one moment that the future Archbishop of Canterbury objected to these squalid exercises. He rolled up his sleeves and joined in with gusto. His were the bad ones, the really terrifying occasions. Some of the beatings administered by this man of God, this future Head of the Church of England, were very brutal. To my certain knowledge he once had to produce a basin of water, a sponge and a towel so that the victim could wash the blood away afterwards. No joke, that. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Books by Roald Dahl The BFG Boy: Tales of Childhood Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Danny the Champion of the World Dirty Beasts The Enormous Crocodile Esio Trot Fantastic Mr. Fox George’s Marvelous Medicine The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me Going Solo James and the Giant Peach The Magic Finger Matilda The Minpins The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes Skin and Other Stories The Twits The Umbrella Man and Other Stories The Vicar of Nibbleswicke The Witches The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Unless one was going to become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer or some other kind of professional person, I saw little point in wasting three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge, and I still hold this view.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“much”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
― 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

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
― Roald Dahl, The Twits

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”
― Roald Dahl, The Witches

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
― 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, Matilda

“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 a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
― Roald Dahl, The Twits

“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, Matilda

“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
― Roald Dahl

“Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda

“Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.”
― Roald Dahl

“Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!”
― Roald Dahl

“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

“I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.”
― Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox