Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don’t know how awful it is unti you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.
The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by.
When I first thought about writing the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I never originally meant to have children in it at all!
Candy is dandy but liqueur is quicker.
Come right up close to me and I will show you something wonderful.
I like enthusiasts of any kind.
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.
The more risks you allow your children to make, the better they learn to look after themselves.
Of course not. You can’t have a family hanging over you like a bunch of old dead goats. No offense.
Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.
Sex is like nose picking. It’s fine as long as you practice it yourself, but it’s disgusting watching someone else doing it.
Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children – as long as you make them laugh as well.
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.
I am suspicious of both facility and speed.
If I had my way, I’d remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.
If I were a headmaster, I would get rid of the history teacher and get a chocolate teacher instead and my pupils would study a subject that affected all of them.
Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful.
Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.
I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.
Eschew all those beastly adjectives...