I spend months, sometimes years, doing what I call dreamtime, weaving it together inside my head. But when I actually feel that the egg of my story is ready to hatch, then I can write it in three months. Then I know the landscape and the people well and from the inside, but I don't necessarily know where the story is going to take us.
Michael MorpurgoWhen I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.
Michael MorpurgoI don't consciously try to take my readers on a journey as I don't really think about my readers when I'm writing. I just try to write what I feel passionately about, to tell a story down onto the page.
Michael MorpurgoI tell you, my friends,โ he said one day. โI tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. Itโs the others that are mad, but they donโt know it. They fight a war and they donโt know what for. Isnโt that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different colour uniform and speaks a different language? And itโs me they call mad!
Michael MorpurgoBut just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better.
Michael MorpurgoThis one isnโt just any old horse. Thereโs a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be? I tell you, my friend, thereโs divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We donโt belong in the same universe as a creature like this.
Michael Morpurgo