Michael Morpurgo Quotes

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.

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.

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

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.

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?

It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.

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

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

Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.

Encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find their own voice whether it's through writing, drama or art is so important in giving young people a sense of self-worth.

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 can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.

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

Anything that gets children reading is fine.

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

I don't know, but I do think that everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can they find the voice and the confidence to tell it? We lack the encouragement as young people to believe this; we very often think that writing is for clever people, which it isn't.

Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.

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

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'.

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

Often it's the latest novel that I've written that is my favourite. I'd been dreaming it for so long, living and breathing its story so that when it finally arrives as a newly published book, smelling wonderful and fresh out of the box, there is nothing like it.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.

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

What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.

By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.

I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's The Elephant's Child and The Jungle Book. Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.

But I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.

Theatre can transform a child's life, just as an early cultural experience whether with opera, ballet, music or art is a wonderful thing because it opens the door to a life-long experience, a life-long enjoyment.

I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.

Like most writers, I sit in a room and scribble a story and you don't have a connection with the people who take your story, whether it be to the stage or to the screen.

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.

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.

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

We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

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

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.

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

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

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.

Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.

I don't consciously try to take my readers on a journey as I don't really think about my readers when I'm writing. I just try to write what I feel passionately about, to tell a story down onto the page.

Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.

I don't want to be separate from something that's important to me.

Any story that gets us thinking, and particularly young people, thinking why? Whether it's as a result of reading the book, or coming out of the theatre or the cinema, I think we should just simply be asking the question 'why'? Why did it happen to those people? Was it necessary? And anything that gets us thinking like that is really important.

We're much alike, bee, you and me," I said. "You may carry your pack underneath you and your rifle may stick out of your bottom. But you and me, bee, are much alike.

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