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.
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.
If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.
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.
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.
Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.
Of course they’re real people. They’re Oompa-Loompas... Imported direct from Loompaland... And oh what a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world – hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping.
Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn’t everything. Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it.
It is almost worth going away because it’s so lovely coming back.
These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.
We are all a great deal luckier that we realize, we usually get what we want – or near enough.
Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.
There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t even started wondering about yet.
The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack.
Don’t argue, my dear child, please don’t argue!” cried Mr. Wonka. “It’s such a waste of precious time!
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.
So the music is saying something to them. It is sending a message. I do not think the human beans is knowing what that message is, but they is loving it just the same.
Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand, Matilda said to her. ‘Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.’ ‘A fine writer will always make you feel that,’ Mrs Phelps said. ‘And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.
Sometimes, on a very clear night,’ the BFG said, ‘and if I is swiggling my ears in the right direction’ – and here he swivelled his great ears upwards so they were facing the ceiling – ‘if I is swiggling them like this and the night is very clear, I is sometimes hearing faraway music coming from the stars in the sky.’ A queer little shiver passed through Sophie’s body. She sat very quiet, waiting for more.
So shines a good deed in a weary world.