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

When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is sparky.

The snozberries taste like snozberries!

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

A little magic can take you a long way.

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

There is no place I know that compares to pure imagination.

We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it.

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

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

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.

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

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.

You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.

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

I never thought my book would turn so many people against slavery.

People aren’t quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They’re not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.

In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.

The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of mans redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.