Top 300 Roald Dahl Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.”

— Roald Dahl

52. “When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.”

— Roald Dahl

53. “But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.”

— Roald Dahl

54. “Perhaps it’s chasing me. But I don’t think it will ever catch me because I am moving fast.”

— Roald Dahl

55. “Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.”

— Roald Dahl

56. “The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”

— Roald Dahl

57. “Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children – as long as you make them laugh as well.”

— Roald Dahl

58. “Two rights don’t equal a left.”

— Roald Dahl

59. “Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.”

— Roald Dahl

60. “Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

— Roald Dahl

61. “Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.”

— Roald Dahl

62. “Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.”

— Roald Dahl

63. “For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.”

— Roald Dahl

64. “Good authour Good books.”

— Roald Dahl

65. “You can write about anything for children as long as you’ve got humour.”

— Roald Dahl

66. “Candy is dandy but liqueur is quicker.”

— Roald Dahl

67. “The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman.”

— Roald Dahl

68. “I’ve heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true. -Grandpa Joe.”

— Roald Dahl

69. “There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t even started wondering about yet.”

— Roald Dahl

70. “When you’re old enough to write a book for children, by then you’ll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you’re an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.”

— Roald Dahl

71. “A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.”

— Roald Dahl

72. “Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.”

— Roald Dahl

73. “Rainbow drops – suck them and you can spit in six different colours.”

— Roald Dahl

74. “To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.”

— Roald Dahl

75. “I go down to my little hut, where it’s tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.”

— Roald Dahl

76. “If the Good Lord intended for us to walk, he wouldn’t have invented rollar skates.”

— Roald Dahl

77. “It is preferable to incur a mild punishment than to perform an onerous task.”

— Roald Dahl

78. “Obscurity is never a virtue.”

— Roald Dahl

79. “Sex is like nose picking. It’s fine as long as you practice it yourself, but it’s disgusting watching someone else doing it.”

— Roald Dahl

80. “I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.”

— Roald Dahl

81. “The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by.”

— Roald Dahl

82. “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

83. “You chose books, I chose looks. Now see the difference?”

— Roald Dahl

84. “The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.”

— Roald Dahl

85. “In any event, parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit.”

— Roald Dahl

86. “I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.”

— Roald Dahl

87. “I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.”

— Roald Dahl

88. “Come right up close to me and I will show you something wonderful.”

— Roald Dahl

89. “I asked my mum, who’s a very clever psychotherapist, and she says that kids love stories about death; they need it, they need to have stories that deal with death and explain it, as a place to put their fears.”

— Roald Dahl

90. “Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!”

— Roald Dahl

91. “I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.”

— Roald Dahl

92. “Fiona has the same glacial beauty of an iceburg, but unlike the iceburg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.”

— Roald Dahl

93. “My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.”

— Roald Dahl

94. “I am suspicious of both facility and speed.”

— Roald Dahl

95. “When I first thought about writing the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I never originally meant to have children in it at all!”

— Roald Dahl

96. “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

97. “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”

— Roald Dahl

98. “The little pig began to pray But Wolfie blew his house away. He shouted, “Bacon, Pork, and Ham! Oh what a lucky wolf I am!” And though he ate the pig quite fast, He carefully kept the tail till last.”

— Roald Dahl

99. “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”

— Roald Dahl

100. “Whipped cream isn’t whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn’t poached eggs unless it’s been stolen in the dead of the night.”

— Roald Dahl