The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Quotes

“Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“And it was then I began to realize for the first time that there are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side, which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment. I myself, if you want to know, fall into a kind of trance, and everything around me disappears. I see only the point of my pencil moving over the paper, and quite often two hours go by as though they were a couple of seconds.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“It was slowly beginning to dawn upon Henry that nothing is any fun if you can get as much of it as you want. Especially money.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“A good plot is like a dream.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The very rich are enormously resentful of bad weather. It is the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind. Not everybody has this ability. It is a gift, and you either have it or you don’t.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“there are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks an ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side, which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Don't worry,' he said. 'So long as the facts are there, I can write the story. But please,' he added, 'let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe, or a fly settled on the rim of your glasses at lunch, or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth...”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“I was thrilled. I had never met a famous writer before. I examined him closely as he sat in my office. What astonished me was that he looked so ordinary. There was nothing in the least unusual about him. His face, his conversation, his eyes behind the spectacles, even his clothes were all exceedingly normal. And yet here was a writer of stories who was famous the world over. His books had been read by millions of people. I expected sparks to be shooting out of his head, or at the very least, he should have been wearing a long green cloak and a floppy hat with a wide brim. But no.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Books by Roald Dahl The BFG Boy: Tales of Childhood Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Danny the Champion of the World Dirty Beasts The Enormous Crocodile Esio Trot Fantastic Mr. Fox George’s Marvelous Medicine The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me Going Solo James and the Giant Peach The Magic Finger Matilda The Minpins The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes Skin and Other Stories The Twits The Umbrella Man and Other Stories The Vicar of Nibbleswicke The Witches The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Unless one was going to become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer or some other kind of professional person, I saw little point in wasting three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge, and I still hold this view.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The beatings at Repton were more fierce and more frequent than anything I had yet experienced. And do not think for one moment that the future Archbishop of Canterbury objected to these squalid exercises. He rolled up his sleeves and joined in with gusto. His were the bad ones, the really terrifying occasions. Some of the beatings administered by this man of God, this future Head of the Church of England, were very brutal. To my certain knowledge he once had to produce a basin of water, a sponge and a towel so that the victim could wash the blood away afterwards. No joke, that. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“At first it was not quite dark. I could see little trees growing out of the face of the cliff, and I grabbed at them with my hands as I went down. Several times I managed to catch hold of a branch, but it always broke off at once because I was so heavy and because I was falling so fast, and once I caught a thick branch with both hands and the tree leaned forward and I heard the snapping of the roots one by one until it came away from the cliff and I went on falling. Then it became darker because the sun and the day were in the fields far away at the top of the cliff, and as I fell I kept my eyes open and watched the darkness turn from grey-black to black, from black to jet black and from jet black to pure liquid blackness which I could touch with my hands but which I could not see. But I went on falling, and it was so black that there was nothing anywhere and it was not any use doing anything or caring or thinking because of the blackness and because of the falling.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More: Deliciously dark adult tales soon to be a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley Dev Patel and more!

“much”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“And it was then I began to realize for the first time that there are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks an ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment. I myself, if you want to know, fall into a kind of trance and everything around me disappears. I see only the point of my pencil moving over the paper, and quite often two hours go by as though they were a couple of seconds.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More: Deliciously dark adult tales soon to be a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley Dev Patel and more!

“For the second day running you have burnt my toast!” Let me explain this ludicrous remark. You were this particular prefect’s fag. That meant you were his servant, and one of your many duties was to make toast for him every day at teatime. For this, you used a long three-pronged toasting fork, and you stuck the bread on the end of it and held it up before an open fire, first one side, then the other. But the only fire where toasting was allowed was in the library, and as teatime approached, there were never less than a dozen wretched fags all jostling for position in front of the tiny grate. I was no good at this. I usually held it too close and the toast got burnt. But as we were never allowed to ask for a second slice and start again, the only thing to do was to scrape the burnt bits off with a knife. You seldom got away with this. The prefects were expert at detecting scraped toast. You would see your own tormentor sitting up there at the top table, picking up his toast, turning it over, examining it closely as though it were a small and very valuable painting. Then he would frown, and you knew you were for it. So now it was night-time and you were down in the changing room in your dressing gown and pajamas, and the one whose toast you had burnt was telling you about your crime. “I don’t like burnt toast.” “I held it too close. I’m sorry.” “Which do you want? Four with the dressing gown on, or three with it off.” “Four with it on,” I said. It was traditional to ask this question. The victim was always given a choice. But my own dressing gown was made of thick brown camel’s hair, and there was never any question in my mind that this was the better choice. To be beaten in pajamas only was a very painful experience, and your skin nearly always got broken. But my lovely dressing gown stopped that from happening. The prefect knew, of course, all about this, and therefore whenever you chose to take an extra stroke and kept the dressing gown on, he beat you with every ounce of his strength. Sometimes he would take a little run, three or four neat steps on his toes, to gain momentum and thrust, but either way, it was a savage business.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“The moment he touched it with his fingers, something electric went through his body, and there came to him a powerful premonition that this was a thing that could destroy the peace and happiness of many people.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“hairy”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“pushed”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“But he is old now, like me, and I doubt he will manage it.” “One last question,” I said. “You keep calling him Henry Sugar. And yet you tell me that wasn’t his name. Don’t you want me to say who he really was when I do the story?” “No,” John Winston said. “Max and I promised never to reveal it. Oh, it’ll probably leak out sooner or later. After all, he was from a fairly well known English family. But I’d appreciate it if you don’t try to find out. Just call him plain Mr. Henry Sugar.” And that is what I have done.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Butcher”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More: Deliciously dark adult tales soon to be a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley Dev Patel and more!

“hole”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More: Deliciously dark adult tales soon to be a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley Dev Patel and more!