Michael Morpurgo Quotes
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I don't consciously try to take my readers on a journey as I don't really think about my readers when I'm writing. I just try to write what I feel passionately about, to tell a story down onto the page.
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One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail.
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A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.
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I got married young, far too young, but it is fine. We are still married 48 years later. I got married at 19.
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Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.
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There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?
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Unless you can be in a place yourself and go through the subject of your story yourself, the next best thing is not to read a book about it, or see a movie about it, it's to talk to the people who've been there.
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But just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better.
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Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.
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We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.
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If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.
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Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
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It's what I'll be singing in the morning. It won't be God Save the Ruddy King or All Things bleeding Bright and Beautiful. It'll be Orange and Lemons for Big Joe, for all of us.
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Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.
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Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.
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I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.
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There's a mouse in here with me. He's sitting there in the light of the lamp, looking up at me. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. There he goes. I can hear him still, scurrying about somewhere under the hayrick. I think he's gone now. I hope he comes back. I miss him already.
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It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.
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Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the literature they read must reflect that. Otherwise we're just entertaining them to pass the time.
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Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.
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I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
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I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.
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Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.
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Encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find their own voice whether it's through writing, drama or art is so important in giving young people a sense of self-worth.