If you are good life is good. And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music. 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. Mr. Wonka: "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."
Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"
Mr. Wonka: "He lived happily ever after." A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it. "The secret of life", he said, "is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do." Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! She thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?
The Prince cried, "Who's this dirty slut?
Off with her nut! Off with her nut!" Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty. Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely. Two rights don't equal a left. My candle burns at both ends it will not last the night but arh my friends and oh my foes it gives a lovely light

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. It was slowly beginning to dawn upon Henry that nothing is any fun if you can get as much of it as you want. Especially money. 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. I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony. What I mean and what I say is two different things.

I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice. ...there are no secrets unless you keep them to yourself, and this was the greatest secret I had ever had to keep in my life so far. We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine. If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. George didn't say a word. He felt quite trembly. He knew something tremendous had taken place that morning. For a few brief moments he had touched with the very tips of his fingers the edge of a magic world.

Obscurity is never a virtue. If I had my way, I would remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead. A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men. Life is more fun if you play games. There are no strangers in here, just friends you haven't met...

So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall. Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. 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. Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so. There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.

Don't gobblefunk around with words. The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, never, never let
Them near your television set -
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink –
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exacts what
This does to your beloved tot?

It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!
He cannot think - he only sees!

"All right!" you’ll cry. "All right!" you’ll say,
"But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children! Please explain!"

We’ll answer this by asking you,
"What used the darling ones to do?
How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?"
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
They... used... to... read! They’d read and read,
And read, and read, and then proceed
To read some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and –
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr Rat and Mr Mole –
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The streams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks –
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.

And once they start – oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did. - I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.
- Or brains even?
- Oh gosh, yes, brains is one of the least. You can be a lovely person without brains, absolutely lovely. Kindness - that simple word. To be kind - it covers everything, to my mind. If you're kind that's it. You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of. Careful those who fight with monsters, that they might become monsters themeselves.

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. The act of copulation is like that of picking the nose. It's all right to be doing it yourself but it is a singularly unattractive spectacle for the onlooker. There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason. 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. A little magic can take you a long way.

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. 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. I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book. We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it.

I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I? I was already beginning to realize that the only way to conduct oneself in a situation where bombs rained down and bullets whizzed past, was to accept the dangers and all the consequences as calmly as possible. Fretting and sweating about it all was not going to help. When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants - and deserves - is a parent who is sparky! The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all. If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up. 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. Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners! I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage.

I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't even started wondering about yet. 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. However small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there. It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.

I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like. The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.