“The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.”

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

But it is impossible to replace a person one has loved to distraction.

And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.

Life is more fun if you play games.

I doubt I would have written a line, unless some minor tragedy had sort of twisted my mind out of the normal rut.

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.

May books and nature be their early joy!

We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

Books. Cats. Life is good.

The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.