Don't gobble funk around with words.

— Roald Dahl

Down with children! Do them in! Boil their bones and fry their skin! Bish them, squish them, bash them, mash them! Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them! Offer chocs with magic powder! Say “Eat up!” then say it louder. Crrram them full of sticky eats, Send them home still guzzling sheets. And in the morning little fools Go marching off to separate schools. A girl feels sick and goes all pale. She yells, “Hey look! I've grrr own a tail!” A boy who's standing next to her Screams, “Help! I think I'm grr rowing fur!” Another shouts, “See look like freaks! There's sisters growing on our cheeks!” A boy who Los extremely tall Cries out, “Not's wrong? I'm grr rowing small!” Four tiny legs begin to sprrroutFrom everybody around about. And all at Vince, all in a terrace, There are no children! Only MICE!

— Roald Dahl

Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!

— Roald Dahl

England once there lived a ligand wonderfully clever pig. To everybody it was plain That Piggy had a massive brain. He worked out sums inside his head, There was no book he hadn't read. He knew what made an airplane fly, He knew how engines worked and why. He knew all this, but in the undone question drove him round the bend:He simply couldn't puzzle out What LIFE was really all about. What was the reason for his birth? Why was he placed upon this earth? His giant brain went round and round. Alas, no answer could be found. Till suddenly one wondrous night. All in a flash he saw the light. He jumped up like a ballet dancer And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"" They want my bacon slice by slice"To sell at a tremendous price!" They want my tender juicy chops"To put in all the butcher's shops!" They want my pork to make a roast"And that's the part'll cost the most!" They want my sausages in strings!" They even want my chitterlings!" The butcher's shop! The carving knife!" That is the reason for my life!" Such thoughts as these are not designed To give a pig great piece of mind. Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland, A pail of pigswill in his hand, And piggy with a mighty roar, Bashes the farmer to the floor… Now comes the rather grizzly bits let's not make too much of it, Except that you must understand That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland, He ate him up from head to toe, Chewing the pieces nice and slow. It took an hour to reach the feet, Because there was so much to eat, And when he finished, Pig, of course, Felt absolutely no remorse. Slowly he scratched his brainy headland with a little smile he said,"I had a fairly powerful hunch"That he might have me for his lunch." And so, because I feared the worst,"I thought I'd better eat him first.

— Roald Dahl

Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.

— Roald Dahl

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

— Roald Dahl

Hey, my spaghetti’s moving!” cried Mr. Twit, poking around in it with his fork.“It’s a new kind,” Mrs. Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. “It’s called Squiggly Spaghetti. It’s delicious. Eat it up while it’s nice and hot.

— Roald Dahl

I am a dream blowing giant,” the BFG said. “(...) I is scuddling away to other places to blow dreams into the bedrooms of sleeping children. Nice dreams. Lovely golden dreams. Dreams that is giving the dreamers a happy time.

— Roald Dahl

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White-hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

— Roald Dahl

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do. The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

— Roald Dahl