Roald Dahl Writing Quotations

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

When you're writing, it's rather like going on a very long walk

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.

When you're old enough to write a book for children, by then you'll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you're an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

When I first thought about writing the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I never originally meant to have children in it at all!

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things [...] The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.

You can write about anything for children as long as you've got humour.

By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.

Good writing is essentially rewriting.