Quotes from Matilda

“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.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“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...”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck.

"Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“Here it is,' Nigel said.
Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY. That spells difficulty.'
How perfectly ridiculous!' snorted Miss Trunchbull. 'Why are all these women married?”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“If you are good life is good.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“Fiona has the same glacial beauty of an iceburg, but unlike the iceburg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“A BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around in the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“You ignorant little slug!" the Trunchbull bellowed. "You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue!”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“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.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“Did you know", Matilda said suddenly, "that the heart of a mouse beats at the rate of six hundred and fifty times a second?"
I did not," Miss Honey said smiling. "How absolutely fascinating. Where did you read that?"
In a book from the library," Matilda said. "And that means it goes so fast that you can't even hear the separate beats. It must sound like a buzz."
It must," Miss Honey said.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I have found it impossible to talk to anyone about my problems. I couldn't face the embarrassment, and anyway I lack the courage. Any courage I had was knocked out of me when I was young. But now, all of sudden I have a sort of desperate wish to tell everything to somebody.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they would read a little Dickens or Kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“A girl should think about making herself look attractive so she can get a good husband later on. Looks is more important than books, Miss Hunky..."
"The name is Honey," Miss Honey said.
"Now look at me," Mrs Wormwood said. "Then look at you. You chose books. I chose looks.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“There's nothin' you can get from a book that you can't get from a television fastah!"
-Harry Wormwood”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“There aren’t many funny bits in Mr Tolkien either,’ Matilda said.
‘Do you think that all children’s books ought to have funny bits in them?’ Miss Honey asked.
‘I do,’ Matilda said. ‘Children are not so serious as grown-ups and love to laugh.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“Both Matilda and Lavender were enthralled. It was quite clear to them that they were at this moment standing in the presence of a master. Here was somebody who had brought the art of skulduggery to the highest point of perfection, somebody, moreover, who was willing to risk life and limb in pursuit of her calling. They gazed in wonder at this goddess, and suddenly even the boil on her nose was no longer a blemish but a badge of courage.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“There is little point in teaching anything backwards. The whole object of life, Headmistress, is to go forwards.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“In any event, parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I?”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“What she needed was just one person, one wise and sympathetic grown-up who could help her.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from The Satanic Verses

“when it comes to fashion, even the most sensible woman is not to be trusted.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God

“I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.

But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.

"You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."

I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.

The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.

Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..”
― Emily Giffin, quote from Something Borrowed

“If anyone asks you if you’re taken,” I said, “the answer is yes.”
“I think I can live with that,” he promised.
“Good,” I said. “Because you don’t want to see me be cross.”
“Too late.”
“Shut up and dance, Walt.”
“Shut up and dance, Walt.”
We did—with the music of a psychotic griffin screaming behind us, and the sirens and horns of Brooklyn wailing below. It was quite romantic.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Serpent's Shadow

“Wouldn't it be easier to change people's eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn them?”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Painted Bird

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.