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" As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short. "

Michael Morpurgo

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" With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times. "

Michael Morpurgo

" By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers. "

Michael Morpurgo

" One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail. "

Michael Morpurgo

" I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more. "

Michael Morpurgo

" The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts. "

Michael Morpurgo

" When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write about something or somebody you know about - something that you feel deeply and passionately about. Never try and force it. "

Michael Morpurgo

" When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today. "

Michael Morpurgo

" It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult. "

Michael Morpurgo

" I was rather a poor student, too easily distracted - did a lot of gazing out of windows, fine for training to be a writer, but not a great way to achieve in the classroom. The truth is that I was happy to bumble along and do enough to avoid detention, but not much more. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it! "

Michael Morpurgo

" We all know that the great memories of our childhood are the little triumphs - it doesn't really matter whether that was in writing, art, on the hockey field or on the football field. It's something that makes you feel - 'I can do this stuff.' "

Michael Morpurgo

" I write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Marry someone who flatters you. Because I've written 80 books since 'War Horse' but when my wife reads one, all she says is, 'It's quite good, but it's not as good as 'War Horse,' is it?' "

Michael Morpurgo

" I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine. "

Michael Morpurgo

" The most important thing is to live an interesting life. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Talk to people and visit interesting places, and don't forget to ask questions. To be a writer you need to drink in the world around you so it's always there in your head. "

Michael Morpurgo

" I got married young, far too young, but it is fine. We are still married 48 years later. I got married at 19. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today. "

Michael Morpurgo

" I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny. "

Michael Morpurgo

" I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child' and 'The Jungle Book.' Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant. "

Michael Morpurgo

" You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights. "

Michael Morpurgo

" War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel. "

Michael Morpurgo

" A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children. "

Michael Morpurgo