Roald Dahl Quotes

I started re-reading 'Harry Potter' just to throw myself back into my childhood. I forgot how awesome the books are.

I like to write books that I would have liked as a child, that would have got me thinking and imagining beyond the words on the page. In a way, my audience is always how I remember myself as a child.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

Books are packaged dreams.

[Books] will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra's infinite variety.

Books are like friends to me. Words come alive on the page.

Reading is where the wild things are.

People think children's books are about teddy bears and little flowers. I realize people sometimes don't know what to do with my books because they say, 'Is it a children's book, and what age group?'

I have a lot of respect and love for children's books.

I wanted to make sure that 'Up' wasn't a 3D movie about a man who sails his house to South America. It's a movie about an old man who sails his house to South America that also happens to be in 3D. So the first thing is always the story.

I love fantasy. I grew up reading fantasy.

I had this desire to see the world. I couldn't see any of it, but I saw it in my imagination, and that's why I always read books, and I could go to Mars or Middle Earth or the Hyborian age.

I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

At university - when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry - I had tried to write a children's book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf's point of view.

Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.

If you have a book, you have a friend.

I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other and there's a real buzz to not only writing about a character I love like Superman, but also writing something that kids can enjoy.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

I've always liked stories. I'm always reading, ever since I was a kid. I've always been reading and wanting to be in some other world.

I definitely think my work comes from things that I liked as a kid, and things I still like now. Monsters and magic and museums and movies, a lot of things that start with 'M' for some reason.