Roald Dahl Biography Quotes 27 Report mistakes

Early Life and Heritage
Roald Dahl was born on 13 September 1916 in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian parents Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg. Norwegian language, customs, and long summer trips to the fjords shaped his early imagination and gave him a lifelong sense of storytelling rooted in family tales and the natural world. When he was still a small boy his sister Astri died, and his father died soon afterward, leaving Sofie to raise the children. Her resilience and high expectations stood behind many of Dahl's later accounts of courage and mischief.

Schooling and Early Influences
Dahl attended Llandaff Cathedral School, then St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare, and finally Repton School in Derbyshire. He encountered the strict discipline of British public schools, experiences he later described unsparingly. At Repton, pupils tested new chocolates from a local manufacturer, an episode that seeded ideas for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory decades later. He was athletic and adventurous rather than scholarly, and when he left school he avoided university, seeking work that would take him abroad.

Work in Africa and Wartime Service
Before the Second World War, Dahl joined the Shell oil company and worked in East Africa, a formative period that fed the landscapes and dangers of his later autobiographical volume Going Solo. When war broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, trained in Kenya, and flew in the Middle East and Greece. In 1940 he crash-landed in the Western Desert and suffered severe injuries, after which he returned to flying and was later invalided out due to the lasting effects. His RAF service, in which he was credited with aerial victories, gave him both the drama and the discipline that would shape his writing.

From Air Attache to Author
In 1942 Dahl was posted to Washington, D.C., as an assistant air attache. There he met the novelist C. S. Forester, who encouraged him to write about his flying experiences. Dahl's first published story grew from that prompt, opening a path to magazine fiction. He also moved within British and American circles that included writers and intelligence figures, meeting contemporaries such as Ian Fleming. His early story The Gremlins, derived from RAF folklore, was written with the encouragement of Walt Disney, though a planned film did not materialize.

Adult Fiction and a Darkly Comic Voice
After the war, Dahl built a reputation for tightly plotted short stories with macabre twists, collected in volumes such as Someone Like You and Kiss Kiss. Many were adapted for radio and television, culminating in the series Tales of the Unexpected, which he introduced in its early years. His adult fiction combined precision, irony, and an unsettling sense that ordinary life could tip into menace with a single choice or coincidence.

Children's Books and Creative Partnerships
In the 1960s he turned decisively toward writing for the young, beginning with James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He became known for stories in which clever, independent children face down cruel or foolish adults, a perspective sharpened by his sense of justice and his relish for mischief. Later books included Fantastic Mr Fox, Danny, the Champion of the World, The BFG, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine, The Witches, and Matilda. A pivotal collaborator was illustrator Quentin Blake, whose wiry, kinetic drawings, beginning in the late 1970s, fused effortlessly with Dahl's sardonic humor and helped define the look of his work for generations of readers.

Family Life, Loss, and Resilience
Dahl married the American actress Patricia Neal in 1953. Their family life in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, was close-knit but marked by profound trials. Their infant son Theo was gravely injured in a traffic accident in New York in 1960, developing hydrocephalus; Dahl worked with toymaker Stanley Wade and neurosurgeon Kenneth Till to create the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, a medical device designed to relieve fluid pressure in the brain and used on many patients. In 1962 their daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis, a loss that never left him; years later he wrote a public plea, Measles: A Dangerous Illness, urging parents to vaccinate. In 1965 Patricia Neal suffered a series of cerebral aneurysms while pregnant; with an intensive home program Dahl organized, and with help from friends and therapists, she returned to work and won new acclaim. The marriage ended in 1983, and that same year he married Felicity (Liccy) Crosland, who became a key partner in stewarding his legacy.

Screenwriting and Adaptation
Dahl's taste for taut plotting and fantastical premises carried into film. He adapted Ian Fleming's work for the screen in You Only Live Twice and contributed to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also wrote the screenplay for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory; although he disagreed with changes made during production, the film helped spread his stories worldwide. His fiction continued to be adapted repeatedly, in television specials, feature films, and later stage musicals.

Work Habits and Autobiography
At Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Dahl wrote in a small hut in the garden, seated in an old armchair with a lap board, pencils, and strict routines. He preferred to draft by hand, guarding the solitude that allowed him to hear the cadences of a child's voice on the page. He documented his formative years in Boy and his wartime years in Going Solo, setting down the incidents, landscapes, and characters that shaped him.

Public Reputation and Controversy
Even as his books delighted readers, Dahl's public commentary sometimes brought controversy. He made antisemitic remarks in interviews, statements widely condemned and at odds with the generosity many found in his fiction. Discussions of offensive language and attitudes in several of his works have continued, underscoring the tension between a remarkable storytelling gift and views that caused real harm.

Final Years, Death, and Legacy
Dahl's later books, including The BFG and Matilda, sealed his place as one of the most widely read children's authors of the twentieth century. He died on 23 November 1990 in Oxford, and was buried in the churchyard at Great Missenden. Friends and family placed personal items in his grave, a wry echo of the playfulness he maintained to the end. After his death, Felicity Dahl helped establish charitable work in his name focused on literacy and serious illness in children, and the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre opened in Great Missenden, preserving his writing hut and archives. His children, including Tessa, Lucy, Theo, and Ophelia, have continued creative and philanthropic pursuits of their own.

Roald Dahl's stories, sharpened by the trials he and Patricia Neal endured and enlivened by the artistry of Quentin Blake, remain a bridge between the frightening and the funny, the cruel and the kind. That ambivalence, forged in his family history, his RAF years, and his own restless imagination, secured him a singular voice in modern literature.

Our collection contains 27 quotes who is written by Roald, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Friendship - Writing - Dark Humor.

Other people realated to Roald: Nicolas Roeg (Director), Patricia Neal (Actress), Geoffrey Fisher (Clergyman), Lewis Gilbert (Director), Wes Anderson (Writer), David Walliams (Actor)