As Told By Roald

Much of my time is spent browsing Pinterest. I'm either pinning every recipe in sight, collecting tips and tricks for the decoration of my seemingly endless future homes, or digging through quotations to sort the sincere and lovely from the cheesy, naff and vommy.

As Roald Dahl can generally be relied upon for sincere and lovely, I wanted to compile a list of Roald Dahl quotations, and this is my blog, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. If you felt any affinity with point 11 of my collection of thoughts, then you will hopefully appreciate this too.

These 25 quotations are in no particular order, and please do add your own favourite in a comment at the end of the post so that I can spend even more of my time reading the words of Mr Dahl the Majestical.

1. "If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."

- The Twits

2. "I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be."

- My Uncle Oswald

3. "Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookcase on the wall."

- Television (poem) in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

4. "It does not matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you."

- The Witches

5. "And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

- The Minpins

6. "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men."

- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

7. "Matilda said, 'Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...' "

- Matilda

8. "You should never, never doubt something that no-one is sure of."

- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

9. "Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn't everything. Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it."

- James and the Giant Peach

10. "Bunkum and tummyrot! You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he'd said 'What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?' He wouldn't even have started!"

- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

11. "Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world."

- Matilda

12. "It is most unlikely. But - here comes the big 'but' - not impossible."

- The Witches

13. "So the music is saying something to them. It is sending a message. I do not think the human beans is knowing what that message is, but they is loving it just the same."

- The BFG

14. "If you are good, life is good."

- Matilda

15. "I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't."

- Danny, the Champion of the World

16. "There was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there."

- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

17. "Never grow up... Always down."

- George's Marvellous Medicine

18. "Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it."

- Matilda

19. "All you do is to look

At a page in this book

Because that's where we always will be.

No book ever ends

When it's full of your friends

The Giraffe and the Pelly and me."

- The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

20. "It's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself."

- Danny, the Champion of the World

21. "So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone."

- Matilda

22. "I've heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true."

- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

23. "When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY."

- Danny, the Champion of the World

24. "I like enthusiasts of any kind."

- My Year

25. "If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books."

- Roald Dahl

*Words by Roald Dahl, illustrations by Quentin Blake.