Michael Morpurgo Quotes

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? ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

I must survive. I have promises to keep. ~ Michael Morpurgo

Anything that gets children reading is fine. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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

I have no pity for them, but no hatred either ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

Good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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

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

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? ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

It is so beautiful but home is home, and home is best. ~ Michael Morpurgo

...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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

Secrets are lies by another name. ~ Michael Morpurgo

I knew the story of 'War Horse' very well. I had read the book even before I did the auditions. I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo. ~ Celine Buckens

he's a fine, fine horse, ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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? ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

What a friend I have in Charlie. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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. ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

She was looking out of the window ~ Michael Morpurgo

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

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?' ~ Michael Morpurgo

I don't know what our capabilities are. If I were there, I think it would be nutty to do that. The only country on Earth more containable than Iran is Iraq. And we've certainly made a mistake there. We could have continued Saddam. ~ Michael Scheuer

Michael had watched his father crawl inside a bottle and die there just so he didn't have to get up and go to work. It wasn't long before his mom retreated behind a vacant gaze, leaving him and his sister to pay the bills, to change her stinking bags, to roll her from one sunny patch by the window to another. His mother had become a potted plant they fretted over. No, that wasn't right. Couldn't plants at least turn their heads and follow the sun? Weren't they better than her in that way? ~ Hugh Howey

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction. ~ Michael Leunig

Besides her family, the only other permanent part of her life was with her friends online. She could be with them at anytime, anywhere she was. She could talk to them about anything. It was her own virtual world and her parents could not interfere or comment on it, but she had dreams too. And her dreams included a man - a man that she created in her dreams and thought that she would never find in the real world. Then, suddenly, Michael showed up claiming to be that man. ~ Stevan V. Nikolic

There are always late bloomers [in sport], no matter size, although big men are more often late bloomers. ~ Michael Wilbon