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" 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

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

Michael Morpurgo

Want

Writer

" 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

Focus

Great

" 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. "

" I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful. "

" 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. "

" It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question. "

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

" 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. "

" It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering. "

" 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

" Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable. "

" 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. "

" To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Anything that gets children reading is fine. "

" 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. "

" I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "