I was already beginning to realize that the only way to conduct oneself in a situation where bombs rained down and bullets whizzed past, was to accep… - Roald Dahl

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze… a person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand, Matilda said to her. 'Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.' 'A fine writer will always make you feel that,' Mrs Phelps said . 'And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.

"The little pig began to pray
But Wolfie blew his house away.
He shouted, "Bacon, Pork, and Ham!
Oh what a lucky wolf I am!"
And though he ate the pig quite fast,
He carefully kept the tail till last."