Morpurgo Quotes & Sayings

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

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

War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

kind, to gaze in triumph at his gory head. So, remembering all this, let us all rejoice and feast together tonight. And in the morning I shall give you all your promised treasure. — Michael Morpurgo

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

When I think of Tomodachi, I think of your mother. Your mother, she too lose her baby. She lose you. That very sad thing for her. Maybe she come looking, and she not find you. You not there when she come. She think you dead for ever. But she see you in her mind. Now as I speak maybe she see you in her mind. You always there. I know. I have son too. I have Michiya. He always in my head. Like Kimi. They dead for sure, but they in my head. They in my head forever. — Michael Morpurgo

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it! — 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

When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words. — Michael Morpurgo

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

Sometimes," said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, "dreams are all that separate us from the machines. — Dan Simmons

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

He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing. — Michael Morpurgo

But just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better. — Michael Morpurgo

Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today. — Michael Morpurgo

To me soldiers had appeared to become younger as the war went on, and Rudy was no exception to this [ ... ]. And like so many of them now he looked, without his helmet, like a child dressed up as a soldier. — 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

You have to understand the sea, he said, to listen to her, to look out for her moods, to get to know her and respect her and love her. Only then can you build boats that feel at home on the sea. — Michael Morpurgo

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

It's what I'll be singing in the morning. It won't be God Save the Ruddy King or All Things bleeding Bright and Beautiful. It'll be Orange and Lemons for Big Joe, for all of us. — Michael Morpurgo

If there's one thing I can't abide it's fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all. — Michael Morpurgo

I knew the story of 'War Horse' very well. I had read the book even before I did the auditions. I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo. — Celine Buckens

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

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. — Michael Morpurgo

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

I am a story as well as a happening, and I want my story to be known, — Michael Morpurgo

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

Good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons — Michael Morpurgo

She was looking out of the window — Michael Morpurgo

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable. — Michael Morpurgo

When people make wars, they make refugees. — 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

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

One day," she told us, "you'll have to leave here and go out into the big world out there and earn your living like everyone else. To do that you need to learn. The more you learn now, the more interesting your life will be. — Michael Morpurgo

I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I've made a much better grandfather ... I don't think I was ready to be a father to be honest. — Michael Morpurgo

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about? — Michael Morpurgo

And then quite suddenly I found that I had no rider, that I had no weight on my back, and that I was alone out in front of the squadron. — Michael Morpurgo

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

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

After this night is over, then you can drift away, they you can sleep for ever, for nothing will ever matter again. — Michael Morpurgo

We fought back with our music; it was the only weapon we had. — 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

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers. — Michael Morpurgo

The crowd were on Fathers side most of them anyways. Everyone loves a loser I thought and there was tears coming in my eyes and I couldn't stop them neither. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

As he did so, he held out his other hand in a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, a smile lighting he worn face. 'In an hour, maybe, or two,' he said, 'we will be trying our best again each other to kill. God only knows why we do it, and I think he has maybe forgotten why. Goodbye Welshman. We have shown them, haven't we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other. That is all it needs, no? — Michael Morpurgo

Eagles are extinct," grumbled Morpurgo. "Perhaps they should have attacked the sky. It betrayed them. — Dan Simmons

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

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. — Michael Morpurgo

Life must not be spent always hoping, always waiting. Life is for living. -Kensuke — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

Secrets are lies by another name. — Michael Morpurgo

My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy. — Michael Morpurgo

Much that is great in literature is an acquired taste, and you have to acquire it in the first place. Our job as parents is essentially to pass on the enthusiasm we had for the things we loved. That's how we'll get them to fall in love with reading in the first place and, hopefully, to stay in love with it. — Michael Morpurgo

I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

There's a mouse in here with me. He's sitting there in the light of the lamp, looking up at me. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. There he goes. I can hear him still, scurrying about somewhere under the hayrick. I think he's gone now. I hope he comes back. I miss him already. — Michael Morpurgo

You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights. — Michael Morpurgo

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? — 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

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. — Michael Morpurgo

I got married young, far too young, but it is fine. We are still married 48 years later. I got married at 19. — Michael Morpurgo

That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune. — Michael Morpurgo

If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer. — Michael Morpurgo

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one. — Michael Morpurgo

He laughed to himself he said because if he did not laugh he would cry. — Michael Morpurgo

As ever, Morpurgo's warmth and humanity suffuse a story of courage, love and hope. — Amanda Craig

But I didn't dare. That has always been my trouble. I've never dared enough. — Michael Morpurgo

The most important thing is to live an interesting life. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Talk to people and visit interesting places, and don't forget to ask questions. To be a writer you need to drink in the world around you so it's always there in your head. — Michael Morpurgo

Always waiting, waiting to go up to the front line, waiting in the trenches with the whizzbags and shells bursting all around you, waiting for the whistle to send you out over the top and across No-Man's-Land, waiting for the bullet that had name on it. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand. — Michael Morpurgo

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

I tell you, my friends,' he said one day. 'I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It's the others that are mad, but they don't know it. They fight a war and they don't know what for. Isn't that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different colour uniform and speaks a different language? And it's me they call mad! — Michael Morpurgo

I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo. — Celine Buckens

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. — Michael Morpurgo

Anything that gets children reading is fine. — Michael Morpurgo

I must survive. I have promises to keep. — Michael Morpurgo

that was the only way of keeping our hopes alive, by looking beyond all we were seeing around us, and the shadow of disaster that hung over us. — Michael Morpurgo

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

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

There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not. — Michael Morpurgo

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. — Michael Morpurgo

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

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

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did ... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it. — Michael Morpurgo

Death, I discovered that day, is not frightening, because it is utterly still. And it is still because death, when it comes, is always over. There's only terror in it if you fear it and ever since my first death, Wes' death, I have never feared it. It is simply the end of a story, and if you've loved the story then it is sad. And sometimes, as it was with Wes, it is an agony of sadness. — Michael Morpurgo

Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write about something or somebody you know about - something that you feel deeply and passionately about. Never try and force it. — Michael Morpurgo

Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever hot hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow's eggs, he didn't want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn't go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of others did. It wasn't like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went. — Michael Morpurgo

Tonight, I want very much to believe that there's a heaven, that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again. — Michael Morpurgo

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

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend. — Michael Morpurgo

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering. — Michael Morpurgo

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up ... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do ... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started. — Michael Morpurgo

Marry someone who flatters you. Because I've written 80 books since 'War Horse' but when my wife reads one, all she says is, 'It's quite good, but it's not as good as 'War Horse,' is it?' — Michael Morpurgo

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