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" 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
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" Anything that gets children reading is fine. "
Michael Morpurgo
Fine
Children
Anything
" It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom. "
Michael Morpurgo
Difference
Makes
Teacher
" 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
" 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
Heart
Sun
Morning
" I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it. "
Michael Morpurgo
Doing
Stories
Head
" 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
" Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable. "
Michael Morpurgo
Failure
Cleansing
Admitting
" Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world. "
Michael Morpurgo
World
Should
Kids
" To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable. "
Michael Morpurgo
Know
Feel
Comfortable
" Much that is great in literature is an acquired taste, and you have to acquire it in the first place. Our job as parents is essentially to pass on the enthusiasm we had for the things we loved. That's how we'll get them to fall in love with reading in the first place and, hopefully, to stay in love with it. "
Michael Morpurgo
Fall
Reading
Great
" 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. "
Michael Morpurgo
War
Always
Focus
" 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
Still
Years
Fine
" 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
More
Focus
Great
" 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
People
Eyes
World
" 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
You
Wife
War
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Pain
Wrong
You
" 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
Music
Mother
Bed
" 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
" 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
" As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short. "
Michael Morpurgo
Remember
Short
Attention
" Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult. "
Michael Morpurgo
Difficult
Isolation
Think
" 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
" I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more. "
Michael Morpurgo
Want
More
Writer
" 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
" 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
" 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
World
Me
Lights
" Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that. "
Michael Morpurgo
Took
Me
Key