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" To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable. "
Michael Morpurgo
Know
Feel
Comfortable
Related Quotes:
" 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
Great
Truth Is
Truth
" 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
I Am
Time
Friend
" 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
Hero
Mine
Up
" Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children. "
Michael Morpurgo
Pet
Animals
Care
" Encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find their own voice whether it's through writing, drama or art is so important in giving young people a sense of self-worth. "
Michael Morpurgo
Writing
People
Believe
" 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
Growing Up
Today
Life
" As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short. "
Michael Morpurgo
Remember
Short
Attention
" 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
Work
Destiny
God
" 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
Fear
Education
Children
" Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise. "
Michael Morpurgo
School
Reading
Children
" Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world. "
Michael Morpurgo
World
Should
Kids
" Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started. "
Michael Morpurgo
Children
Funny
Love
" When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them. "
Michael Morpurgo
Children
Sleep
World
" I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I've made a much better grandfather... I don't think I was ready to be a father to be honest. "
Michael Morpurgo
Better
Think
Say
" When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well. "
Michael Morpurgo
Two
Down
Fast
" 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
Elephant
Best
Child
" Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life. "
Michael Morpurgo
Book
Writing
Money
" 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
React
Settle
Matter
" I really can't write fantasy. I cannot invent a world which does not exist. And I can't read fantasy either. As soon as I realise I'm reading a book that hasn't got its roots in a reality I can comprehend, I switch off. "
Michael Morpurgo
Reading
Book
World
" I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful. "
Michael Morpurgo
Studying
You
Will
" Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised. "
Michael Morpurgo
Will
Books
You
" 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
Words
Focus
Flow
" It gives me confidence to know that what I'm writing has a veracity of its own without me having to invent it. When I'm writing fiction, I must believe it to be true, or I can see no point in it. "
Michael Morpurgo
Writing
Believe
Confidence
" Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us. "
Michael Morpurgo
Touch
Best
Eyes
" With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book. "
Michael Morpurgo
Time
Mother
Busy
" Anything that gets children reading is fine. "
Michael Morpurgo
Fine
Children
Anything
" 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
Understand
War
Want
" Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight. "
Michael Morpurgo
War
People
Peace
" If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it. "
Michael Morpurgo
Story
Writing
You
" Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future. "
Michael Morpurgo
Future
Children
Best