Top 70 Michael Morpurgo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.”

— Michael Morpurgo

Featured in: Teaching Quotes, Teacher Appreciation Quotes

2. “There’s room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world – that’s what I think.”

— Michael Morpurgo

3. “I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.”

— Michael Morpurgo

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

— Michael Morpurgo

5. “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

6. “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

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

— Michael Morpurgo

8. “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.”

— Michael Morpurgo

9. “Secrets are lies by another name.”

— Michael Morpurgo

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

— Michael Morpurgo

11. “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

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

— Michael Morpurgo

13. “Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other.”

— Michael Morpurgo

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

— Michael Morpurgo

15. “You know something, you never know what lonely is until you are really alone, alone all day, alone all night, with no one to talk to.”

— Michael Morpurgo

16. “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

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

— Michael Morpurgo

18. “I have no pity for them, but no hatred either.”

— Michael Morpurgo

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

— Michael Morpurgo

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

— Michael Morpurgo

21. “I’m still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.”

— Michael Morpurgo

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “If I learned anything in this life, I’ve learned that you can’t cling on.”

— Michael Morpurgo

29. “Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never – pleasurable.”

— Michael Morpurgo

30. “I think I have always had a strong sense of justice, of fair play, of what is right and what is wrong.”

— Michael Morpurgo

31. “Why does this war have to destroy anything and everything that’s fine and beautiful?”

— Michael Morpurgo

32. “Charlie often told me we were living on borrowed time out here. I don’t want to borrow any more time. I want time to stop so that tomorrow never comes, so that dawn will never happen.”

— Michael Morpurgo

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear – which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you’ll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.”

— Michael Morpurgo

37. “If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.”

— Michael Morpurgo

38. “Tonight, more than any other night, I want to feel alive.”

— Michael Morpurgo

39. “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

40. “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

41. “Don’t worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.”

— Michael Morpurgo

42. “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

43. “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

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

— Michael Morpurgo

45. “But look after yourself – there will be great dangers on the way. Remember, the right road is never the easy road.”

— Michael Morpurgo

46. “He laughed to himself he said because if he did not laugh he would cry.”

— Michael Morpurgo

47. “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

48. “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

49. “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

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

— Michael Morpurgo