Michael Morpurgo famous quotes

I write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Writing #Fiction

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Focus #Succeed #Failing

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Morning #Heart #Dark

It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Teacher #Differences #Classroom

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Money #Book #Writing

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Intelligent #Animal

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Encouraging #Art #Drama

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Country #Teacher #Encouragement

Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Reading #School

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Knowing #Stories #Wells

I got married young, far too young, but it is fine. We are still married 48 years later. I got married at 19.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Years #Married #Young

I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Book #Thinking #Study

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Book #Character #Keys

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Friendship #Grandchildren #Talking

Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Book #Kids #World

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Attention #Remember

Anything that gets children reading is fine.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Reading #Fine

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Teacher #Children #Book

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Memories #Real #Historical

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Friendship #Writing #Trying

If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Summer #Nightmare #Middle

If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#This Life

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Sea #Dancing #Leader

I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Horse #Hate #Love You

He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Eye #Knowing #Way

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?
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Eye #Men #Serenity

I tell you, my friends,’ he said one day. ‘I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It’s the others that are mad, but they don’t know it. They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different colour uniform and speaks a different language? And it’s me they call mad!
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Crazy #War #Fighting

I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's The Elephant's Child and The Jungle Book. Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Book #Writing

We all know that the great memories of our childhood are the little triumphs - it doesn't really matter whether that was in writing, art, on the hockey field or on the football field. It's something that makes you feel - 'I can do this stuff'.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Football #Art #Memories

There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Thinking #Miracle #Magic

I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Thinking #Want #Not Sure

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Book #Thinking #Stories

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Teacher #Children #Moving

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#War #Fighting #People

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Believe #Men #Earth

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#War #Lessons #Forgotten

Blind terror drove me on, with my flying stirrups whipping me into a frenzy. With no rider to carry I reached the kneeling riflemen first and they scattered as I came upon them.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Flying #Kneeling #Firsts

Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Interesting #People #Interesting Life

This one isn’t just any old horse. 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? I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Horse #War #Butterfly

cause when there's life there's still hope
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Causes #Stills

Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other
-- Michael Morpurgo

#People #Problem

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Dark #Buttons

But I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Trouble #Enough #Dare

I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Christian #Brother #Hero

You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Wish #Actors #Nerves

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!
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Writing #Voice #Giving

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#War #Focus #Suffering

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Technology #Understanding

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Notebook #Silly #Writing

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Children #Book #Writing

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Thinking #Light #Missing

stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Dream #Book #Thinking

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Dream #Book #Writing

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Trying #Might #Pastries

My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Thinking #Feelings #Matter

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#War #Crazy #British

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#War #Home #Joey

Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Brother #Real #Shadow

We're much alike, bee, you and me," I said. "You may carry your pack underneath you and your rifle may stick out of your bottom. But you and me, bee, are much alike.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#May #Bees #Sticks

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.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Beautiful #Morning #Kings

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.
-- Michael Morpurgo

#Admitting #Cleansing