the wisdom of Roald Dahl

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.

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 it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

a little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

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...”

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.

we have so much time and so little to do. strike that, reverse it.

i was glad my father was an eye-smiler. it meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. a mouth-smile is different. you can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. i've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. so watch out, i say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. it's sure to be a phony.