Roald Dahl Quotes

I don't want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read.

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

I still find it quite easy to find my way into a child's imagination. We're all Peter Pan ourselves in some respects. Everybody should keep some grip on childhood, even as a grownup.

I don't ever want to grow up. That's boring.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven't closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth

To write for children at all is an act of faith.

People often say that you should never work with child actors. I think that's all wrong. Children have not had the imagination kicked out of them by life experience and adulthood. So, they still are very much alive with that kind of magical thinking which enables an actor to believe they're in these circumstances and make them real to you.

You gave me Christopher Robin, and then You breathed new life in Pooh. Whatever of each has left my pen Goes homing back to you. My book is ready, and comes to greet The mother it longs to see -- It would be my present to you, my sweet, If it weren't your gift to me.

I still retain a bit of a child's focus on things, so we [with my sister] figure if we're going to write books, our best shot is to write children's books, because we relate pretty readily on that level.

A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at.

As children we all wonder - we wonder all the time. And that gets lost in adulthood. It gets beaten out, it gets filtered out or diluted out.

Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.

Writing for children is my... that's my medium, you know, and the medium is the picture book, which is a very particular kind of book. I try to give children what I would give anybody, you know. I become interested in something. I find something fascinating. It has to fascinate me, and then I want to give it to them.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

I couldn't wait until I grew up. I used to look at my mom's stockings and put them on with her high heels and mess with my hair.

I'm still very much a kid inside myself.

I always love writing about children.

I've never outgrown my childhood.

Once in a while, I do these things that would make the 10-year old version of me laugh. I don't know why. You've got to do something a little bit immature. I'm surprised at how often those are my best ideas.

I hope that there's a difference between being childish and childlike and that I'm the latter, if you take my meaning. I often sort of wonder. I don't think I'm a terribly good grown-up; I don't take responsibility easily or well in many areas of life. Finance and stuff like that, I'm absolutely appalling.