Roald Dahl

The more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury.

If you are good, life is good.

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

I love books.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

As a child I used to read Gone with the Wind over and over again. I wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. I never wanted to believe that it was possible that there could be infidelity. I never wanted to be believe that it was even possible for a man to look another way, even for a moment. My bubble of monogamy was pierced in a harsh way.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

Never judge a book by its movie.