Michael Morpurgo Quotes

You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights.

When I sit down I write very fast ... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.

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.

I should begin at the beginning. I know that. But the trouble is that I don't know the beginning. I wish I did. I do know my name, Arthur Hobhouse. Arthur Hobhouse had a beginning, that's for certain. I had a father and a mother too, but God only knows who they were, and maybe even he doesn't know for sure. I mean, God can't be looking everywhere all at once, can he? So where the name Arthur Hobhouse comes from and who gave it to me I have no idea. I don't even know if it's my real name. I don't know the date and place of my birth either, only that it was probably in Bermondsey, London, sometime in about 1940.

I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I've made a much better grandfather ... I don't think I was ready to be a father to be honest.

It gives me confidence to know that what I'm writing has a veracity of its own without me having to invent it. When I'm writing fiction, I must believe it to be true, or I can see no point in it.

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

As he did so, he held out his other hand in a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, a smile lighting he worn face. 'In an hour, maybe, or two,' he said, 'we will be trying our best again each other to kill. God only knows why we do it, and I think he has maybe forgotten why. Goodbye Welshman. We have shown them, haven't we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other. That is all it needs, no?

The crowd were on Fathers side most of them anyways. Everyone loves a loser I thought and there was tears coming in my eyes and I couldn't stop them neither.

he's a fine, fine horse,

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

You have to understand the sea, he said, to listen to her, to look out for her moods, to get to know her and respect her and love her. Only then can you build boats that feel at home on the sea.

I was once told in Sunday school that a church tower reaches up skywards because it is a promise of Heaven. Church towers are different in France. It was the first thing I noticed when I came here, when I changed my world of home for my world of war. In comparison the church towers at home seem almost squat, hiding themselves away in the folds of the fields. Here there are no folds in the fields, only wide open plains, scarcely a hill in sight. And instead of church towers they have spires that thrust themselves skywards like a child putting his hand up in class, longing to be noticed. But God, if there is one, notices nothing here. He has long since abandoned this place and all of us who live in it.

Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write about something or somebody you know about - something that you feel deeply and passionately about. Never try and force it.

I must survive. I have promises to keep.

our home should be an oasis of peace and harmony for us in a troubled world,

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!

When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.

Why does this war have to destroy anything and everything that's fine and beautiful?

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

With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.

Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them.

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?

He laughed to himself he said because if he did not laugh he would cry.

What a friend I have in Charlie.

Good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons

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.

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.

I think I have always had a strong sense of justice, of fair play, of what is right and what is wrong.

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

Stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions

When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.

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.

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

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

Marry someone who flatters you. Because I've written 80 books since 'War Horse' but when my wife reads one, all she says is, 'It's quite good, but it's not as good as 'War Horse,' is it?'

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

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.

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

When I think of Tomodachi, I think of your mother. Your mother, she too lose her baby. She lose you. That very sad thing for her. Maybe she come looking, and she not find you. You not there when she come. She think you dead for ever. But she see you in her mind. Now as I speak maybe she see you in her mind. You always there. I know. I have son too. I have Michiya. He always in my head. Like Kimi. They dead for sure, but they in my head. They in my head forever.

When you're young you can't work out the age of an adult - they're just quite old, old, or very old.

Tonight, more than any other night, I want to feel alive.

She was looking out of the window

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

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about?

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.

One day," she told us, "you'll have to leave here and go out into the big world out there and earn your living like everyone else. To do that you need to learn. The more you learn now, the more interesting your life will be.

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!

Secrets are lies by another name.

Much that is great in literature is an acquired taste, and you have to acquire it in the first place. Our job as parents is essentially to pass on the enthusiasm we had for the things we loved. That's how we'll get them to fall in love with reading in the first place and, hopefully, to stay in love with it.

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

It is so beautiful but home is home, and home is best.

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.

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up ... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do ... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started.

The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts.

You know something, you never know what lonely is until you are really alone, alone all day, alone all night, with no one to talk to.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did ... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

But look after yourself - there will be great dangers on the way. Remember, the right road is never the easy road.

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.

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.

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 color uniform and speaks a different language?

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.'

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.

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

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.

Anything that gets children reading is fine.

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

Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.

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

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.

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

Tonight, I want very much to believe that there's a heaven, that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again.

With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.

We fought back with our music; it was the only weapon we had.

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.

And then quite suddenly I found that I had no rider, that I had no weight on my back, and that I was alone out in front of the squadron.

...that we should look out of the window, choose a star, and make a last wish before we went to sleep, and she told us we should wish the best, not just for each of ourselves, but more for each other, because we were all the best of friends.

When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.

If there's one thing I can't abide it's fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all.

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable.

I tried to smile back, but no smile came, only tears.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.

It's no good wishing for the impossible. Don't wish. Remember. Remembrances are real.

Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today.

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

cause when there's life there's still hope

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.

To me soldiers had appeared to become younger as the war went on, and Rudy was no exception to this [ ... ]. And like so many of them now he looked, without his helmet, like a child dressed up as a soldier.

Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever hot hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow's eggs, he didn't want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn't go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of others did. It wasn't like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went.

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

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.

I have no pity for them, but no hatred either

Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us.

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.