Shakespeare, daddy.” “Was he brainy?” “Very, daddy.” “He had masses of hair, did he?” “He was bald, daddy.” To which the father had snapped, “If you can’t talk sense then shut up.
I’m afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are.
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.
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.
No one who is good can ever be ugly.
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.
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.
She sat there majestic in her armchair, filling every inch of it. Not even a mouse could have squeezed in to sit beside her.
It was one of those golden autumn afternoons and there were blackberries and splashes of old man’s beard in the hedges, and the hawthorn berries were ripening scarlet for the birds when the cold winter came along. There were tall trees here and there on either side, oak and sycamore and ash and occasionally a sweet chestnut.
The very rich are enormously resentful of bad weather. It is the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about.
Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music.
What if they come after us?” said Mr. Bucket, speaking for the first time. “What if they capture us?” said Mrs. Bucket. “What if they shoot us?” said Grandma Georgina. “What if my beard were made of green spinach?” cried Mr. Wonka. “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!
It was an unhappy truth, he told himself, that nearly all people in the world behave badly when there is something really big at stake.
The next day she carried her secret weapon to school in her satchel. She was tingling with excitement. She was longing to tell matilda about her plan of battle. In fact, she wanted to tell the whole class. But she finally decided to tell nobody. It was better that way, because then no one, even when put under the most severe torture, would be able to name her as a culprit.
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.
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.
But where, you might ask, is this book that the BFG wrote? It’s right here. You’ve just finished reading it.
What’s happened?” screamed Mrs. Twit. They stood in the middle of the room, looking up. All the furniture, the big table, the chairs, the sofa, the lamps, the little side tables, the cabinet with bottles of beer in it, the ornaments, the electric heater, the carpet, everything was stuck upside down to the ceiling. The pictures were upside down on the walls. And the floor they were standing on was absolutely bare. What’s more, it had been painted white to look like the ceiling.
I think you is barking up the wrong dog.
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. 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.