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

- Michael Morpurgo

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

- Michael Morpurgo

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

- Michael Morpurgo

Anything that gets children reading is fine.

- Michael Morpurgo

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

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

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

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

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable.

- Michael Morpurgo

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.

- 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

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

- 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 fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

- Michael Morpurgo

Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.

- Michael Morpurgo

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

- Michael Morpurgo

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

- Michael Morpurgo

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

- Michael Morpurgo

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

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