Michael Morpurgo Quotes
-
It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.
-
Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
-
I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
-
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.
-
Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers
-
Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!
-
Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.
-
I spend months, sometimes years, doing what I call dreamtime, weaving it together inside my head. But when I actually feel that the egg of my story is ready to hatch, then I can write it in three months. Then I know the landscape and the people well and from the inside, but I don't necessarily know where the story is going to take us.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.
-
By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.
-
There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.
-
As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.
-
Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.
-
But I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.
-
I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.
-
Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.
-
Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.
-
Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.
-
You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.
-
cause when there's life there's still hope
-
If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.
-
That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.