Roald Dahl
The mid-twentieth century saw a particular strand of English-language fiction pull toward the darkly comic and the fantastical — worlds where the ordinary turned strange and children often possessed a clarity that adults lacked. Roald Dahl, born on September 13, 1916, in Llandaff, was a citizen of both Norway and the United Kingdom, and he worked in English and Norwegian across a writing life that resisted easy categorization.
Before he became known as a children's writer, novelist, and short story writer, Dahl served as a fighter pilot. He was educated at The Cathedral School, at Weston-super-Mare, and at Repton School, before his career took him into the air and, eventually, onto the page. His work spanned children's literature, fantasy, horror, autobiography, poetry, and screenwriting. Among his notable works are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, and The Gremlins — titles that moved between registers of menace and humor, often centering young protagonists navigating adult worlds of cruelty and absurdity. His range as a writer extended well beyond children's fiction, though that category remained a consistent throughline in his output.
Dahl received the Edgar Awards, the Children's Book Award in the United Kingdom, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement — a recognition that acknowledged the breadth of his engagement with fantastical and unsettling modes of storytelling. He died on November 23, 1990, in Oxford. The Library of Congress catalogs his work under the authorized label "Dahl, Roald," a simple designation for a body of fiction that moved restlessly across genre and age group throughout his career.
Quotes by Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl's insights on:
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life.... 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.
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
As the night gets dark, let your worries fade. sleep peacefully knowing you've done all you can do for today.
If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.
The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all.
I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.
'Dexter' is a very well-oiled machine; it's just a great show and great to be part of.
When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.
I didn’t know which direction I was going in. I just went on walking and calling out, walking and calling; and each time I called, I would stop and listen. But no answer came.
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.