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" 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

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" 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 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

" 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

" 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

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

Michael Morpurgo

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not. "

Michael Morpurgo

" Anything that gets children reading is fine. "

Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

Michael Morpurgo

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Michael Morpurgo

" 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

" Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us. "

Michael Morpurgo

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world. "

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