Memorandum "Boy Tales of Childhood" By Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl 1916-1990, Born in Wales of Norwegian parents and educated in England. RAF fighter pilot during WWII. He wrote many children's books including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

☆Citations of Boy Tales of Childhood. An autobiography. 

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. If you're kind, that's it. 

Kind- n/ genus. a/ sympathetic. benevolent, gentle

generous a/ liberal. free om giving, abundant (Collins dictionary)

I am totally convinced that most grown-ups have completely forgotten what it is like to be a child between the ages of five and ten...I can remember exactly what it was like. I am certain I can.

You can write about anything for children as long as you've got humor.

My main preoccupation when I am writing a story is a constant unholy terror of boring the reader, Consequently, as I write my stories I always try to create situations that will cause my reader to 1, Laugh, 2, Squirm, 3, Become enthralled, 4, Becomes TENSE and EXCITED and say 'read on please read on, Don't stop.

All good books have to have a mixture of extremely nasty people -which are always fun- and some nice people. 

He(Father) was tremendous diary-writer. I still have one of his many notebooks from the Great War of 1914-18. Every single day during those five war years he would write several pages of comment and observation about the event of the time. He wrote with a pen and although Norwegian was his mother-tongue, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

In 1920, when I was still only three,...he(father)died...Here she(mother) was, a young Norwegian in a foreign land(Wales), ..had five children ..refused to take the easy way out(did not go back to Norway). Her husband had always sated most emphatically that he wished all his children to be educated in English schools. They were the best in the world, he used to say, Better by far than the Norwegian ones. Better even than the Walsh ones, despite the fact that he lived in Wales....there was some kind of magic about English schooling and that the education it provided had caused the inhabitants of a small island to become a great nation and great Empire and the produce the world's greatest literature...My mother was determined to carry out the wishes of her dead husband. 

(When he did mischief and a man hit his bottom by the cane. And mother decided to take him away from this school.) 'I (Mother) said I would, as soon as the school year is finished. I shall find you an English school this time.....Your father was right. English school are the best in the world."

I never have got over it..... Michael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the Headmaster's sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. The great man then gave him one terrific crack. After that, there was a pause, The cane was put down and the Headmaster began filling his pipe from a tine of tabacco. He also started to lecture the kneeling boy about sin and wrongdoing.....A fourth stroke was deliverd, and all the time, over the piple-lighting and sinning and misdeeds and malpractice went on without a stop...... and the end of it all, a basin, a sponge and a small clean towel were produced by the Headmaster, and the victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers......I know very well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor Mercy in flogging some small boy who had broken the rule,,,,,,And if someone had told me at the time that this flogging clergyman was one day to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, I would never have believed it. It was all this, I think that made me begin to have doubts about religious and even about God. If this person I kept telling myself, was one of God's chosen salesman on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business.