These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.
But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.
A witch never gets caught. Don’t forget that she has magic in her fingers and devilry dancing in her blood.
The children and their parents were too flabber-gasted to speak. They were staggered. They were dumbfounded. They were bewildered and dazzled. They were completely bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing. They simply stood and stared.
She might even – and this will make you jump – she might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment.
There’s someone over there needs a helping hand and it’s our job to give it.
Poppyrot and pigwash!
I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But – and here comes the big “but” – it is not impossible.
My Great Glass Elevator is ready for anything! In we go! Into the breach, dear friends, into the breach!
And on the pillow of the bed lay the head.
That’s why they always put two blank pages at the back of the atlas. They’re for new countries. You’re meant to fill them in yourself.
But sometimes mysteries are more intriguing than explanations.
I knew immediately, of course, that this was none other than The Grand High Witch herself. I knew also why she had worn a mask. She could never have moved around in public, let alone book in at a hotel, with her real face. Everyone who saw her would have run away screaming.
But Goldilocks, like many freaks, Does not appreciate antiques.
How can you whip cream without whips? Whipped cream isn’t whipped cream at all unless it’s been whipped with whips. Just as a poached egg isn’t a poached egg unless it’s been stolen from the woods in the dead of night!
Just look at that beastly duck cooking at my stove!” Cried Mrs Gregg as she flew past the kitchen window. “How dare she!
Crocodile tongues!” he cried. “One thousand long slimy crocodile tongues boiled up in the skull of a dead witch for twenty days and nights with the eyeballs of a lizard! Add the fingers of a young monkey, the gizzard of a pig, the beak of a green parrot, the juice of a porcupine, and three spoonfuls of sugar. Stew for another week, and then let the moon do the rest!
I dare not do that, said Mr. Fox, because this place I am hoping to get is so marvelous that if I described it to you now you would go crazy with excitement.
Most people – and especially small children – are often quite scared of being out of doors alone in the moonlight. Everything is so deadly quiet, and the shadows are so long and black, and they keep turning into strange shapes that seem to move as you look at them, and the slightest little snap of a twig makes you jump.
When she marched – Miss Trunchbull never walked, she always marched like a storm-trooper with long strides and arms aswinging – when she marched along a corridor you could actually hear her snorting as she went, and if a group of children happened to be in her path, she ploughed right on through them like a tank, with small people bouncing off her to left and right.
In the end there’s nothing left except a pair of shoes and a bundle of old clothes.