Top 300 Roald Dahl Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Truth is more important than modesty.”

— Roald Dahl

202. “But where, you might ask, is this book that the BFG wrote? It’s right here. You’ve just finished reading it.”

— Roald Dahl

203. “What’s that?’ Sophie cried. ‘That is all the giants zippfizzing off to another country to guzzle human beans,’ the BFG.”

— Roald Dahl

204. “What a nice child she is, Miss Honey thought. I don’t care what her father said about her, she seems very quiet and gentle to me. And not a bit stuck up in spite of her brilliance.”

— Roald Dahl

205. “But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.”

— Roald Dahl

206. “Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones.”

— Roald Dahl

207. “Bunkum and tummyrot! You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.”

— Roald Dahl

208. “Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.”

— Roald Dahl

209. “Mr. Twit was one of these very hairy-faced men. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose, was covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear-holes.”

— Roald Dahl

210. “But it is impossible to replace a person one has loved with distractions.”

— Roald Dahl

211. “This dream is continuing very nice. It has a very dory-hunky ending.”

— Roald Dahl

212. “The Trunchbull” is no match for Matilda!”

— Roald Dahl

213. “There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

— Roald Dahl

214. “The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.”

— Roald Dahl

215. “No one who is good can ever be ugly.”

— Roald Dahl

216. “I think you is barking up the wrong dog.”

— Roald Dahl

217. “This, he thought, is what hell must be like. Hell without heat. There was something unholy about it all, something unbelievably diabolical.”

— Roald Dahl

218. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s none of my business what you do. The trouble is, I’m a writer, and most writers are terrible nosey parkers.”

— Roald Dahl

219. “I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.”

— Roald Dahl

220. “Unless one was going to become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer or some other kind of professional person, I saw little point in wasting three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge, and I still hold this view.”

— Roald Dahl

221. “We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”

— Roald Dahl

222. “It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face. The.”

— Roald Dahl

223. “By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on.”

— Roald Dahl

224. “Some three years ago I drove down to Provence to spend a summer weekend with a lady who was interesting to me simply because she possessed an extraordinarily powerful muscle in a region where other women have no muscles at all.”

— Roald Dahl

225. “You is getting nosier than a parker.”

— Roald Dahl

226. “A dream is not needing anything. If it is a good one, it is waiting peaceably for ever until it is released and allowed to do its job. If it is a bad one, it is always fighting to get out.”

— Roald Dahl

227. “The trouble is, I’m writer, and most writers are terrible nosey parkers.”

— Roald Dahl

228. “Mary Welland was certainly lovely. She was gentle and kind. She remained my friend all the time I was in hospital. But there is a world of difference falling in love with a voice and remaining in love with a person you can see. From the moment I opened my eyes, Mary became a human instead of a dream and my passion evaporated.”

— Roald Dahl

229. “Then they would roll these handfuls of cloud in their fingers until they turned into what looked like large white marbles. Then they would toss the marbles to one side and quickly grab more bits of cloud and start over again.”

— Roald Dahl

230. “I didn’t know which direction I was going in. I just went on walking and calling out, walking and calling; and each time I called, I would stop and listen. But no answer came.”

— Roald Dahl

231. “What’s your name?’ ‘Pilot Officer Dahl, sir.’ ‘Very well, Dahl,’ he said, weighing the package up and down in one hand. ‘This is on no account to fall into enemy hands. Guard it with your life. Do I make myself clear?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, feeling important.”

— Roald Dahl

232. “But Mr Tibbs didn’t hesitate for long. ‘Tell the head gardener,’ he whispered, ’that I require immediately a brand new unused garden fork and also a spade. And for a knife we shall use the great sword hanging on the wall in the morning-room. But clean the sword well first. It was last used to cut off the head of King Charles the First and there may still be a little dried blood on the blade.”

— Roald Dahl

233. “Oh where, oh where had Snow White gone? She’d found it easy, being pretty To hitch a ride into the city.”

— Roald Dahl

234. “Eschew all those beastly adjectives...”

— Roald Dahl

235. “You’re cheating people who trust you.”

— Roald Dahl

236. “When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.”

— Roald Dahl

237. “I would love to to go somewhere else and pick peachy fruits in the early morning from the back of an elefunt.”

— Roald Dahl

238. “She decided that every time her father or her mother was beastly to her, she would get her own back in some way or another. A small victory or two would help her to tolerate their idiocies and would stop her from going crazy.”

— Roald Dahl

239. “I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But – and here comes the big “but” – it is not impossible.”

— Roald Dahl

240. “Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.”

— Roald Dahl

241. “My Great Glass Elevator is ready for anything! In we go! Into the breach, dear friends, into the breach!”

— Roald Dahl

242. “Me is the only one what won’t be gobbled up because giants is never eating giants.”

— Roald Dahl

243. “It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.”

— Roald Dahl

244. “Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” And at the same time, his long bony body rose up out of the bed and his bowl of soup went flying into the face of Grandma Josephine, and in one fantastic leap, this old fellow of ninety-six and a half, who hadn’t been out of bed these last twenty years, jumped on to the floor and started doing a dance of victory in his pajamas.”

— Roald Dahl

245. “What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays.”

— Roald Dahl

246. “Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand, Matilda said to her. ‘Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.’ ‘A fine writer will always make you feel that,’ Mrs Phelps said. ‘And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

— Roald Dahl

247. “Perhaps his anger was intensified because he saw her getting pleasure from something that was beyond his reach.”

— Roald Dahl

248. “Never get out of bed, never go to the window, and never look behind the curtain.”

— Roald Dahl

249. “This Giant had some sort of magic in his legs.”

— Roald Dahl

250. “She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding.”

— Roald Dahl