Michael Morpurgo Quotes

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Michael Morpurgo

Profession : Author

Birth : October 5, 1943

When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.

Michael Morpurgo

With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.

Michael Morpurgo

I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.

Michael Morpurgo

You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.

Michael Morpurgo

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.

Michael Morpurgo

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

Michael Morpurgo

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.'

Michael Morpurgo

When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.

Michael Morpurgo

It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years.

Michael Morpurgo

When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.

Michael Morpurgo

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

Michael Morpurgo

Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them.

Michael Morpurgo

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

Michael Morpurgo

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

Michael Morpurgo

I was rather a poor student, too easily distracted - did a lot of gazing out of windows, fine for training to be a writer, but not a great way to achieve in the classroom. The truth is that I was happy to bumble along and do enough to avoid detention, but not much more.

Michael Morpurgo

Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us.

Michael Morpurgo

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

Michael Morpurgo

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

Michael Morpurgo

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.

Michael Morpurgo

With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.

Michael Morpurgo