Quotables: Roald Dahl

Quotables: A feature that highlights quotes from some of my favorite books and authors. If you like the quotes, you'll probably like the book(s).

Quotes by the marvelous, nonsensical Roald Dahl.

The BFG

Source

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”  
~ ~ ~ ~
“Do you like vegetables?" Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food.
"You is trying to change the subject," the Giant said sternly. "We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”  
~ ~ ~ ~
“Words," he said, "is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.”  



~ ~ ~ ~
'I is not understanding human beans at all,' the BFG said.' You is a human bean and you is saying it is grizzling and horrigust for giants to be eating human beans. Right or left?'

'Right,' Sophie said.

'But human beans is squishing each other all the time,' the BFG said. 'They is shootling guns and going up in
aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other's heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.'
~ ~ ~ ~
“I is reading it hundreds of times,' the BFG said. 'And I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It is the most scrumdiddlyumptious story.'

Sophie took the book out of his hand. 'Nicholas Nickleby,' she read aloud.

'By Dahl's Chickens,' the BFG said.”  

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.”  

Source

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

“We must hurry!’ said Mr. Wonka. ‘We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it!”  

The Twits

"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.”  

Fantastic Mr. Fox

“I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.”  
 ~ ~ ~ ~
“I think I have this thing where everybody has to think I'm the greatest.And if they aren't completely knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me, I don't feel good about myself.”  

Danny the Champion of the World

“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.”