Danny The Champion Of The World Quotes
"I think that all the love he had felt for my mother when she was alive he now lavished upon me."
"‘We are engineers, you and I,’ he used to say to me. ‘We earn our living by repairing engines and we can’t do good work in a rotten workshop.’"
"I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile, because it’s impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself."
"Dreams, my love, are very mysterious things. They float around in the night air like little clouds, searching for sleeping people."
"‘A petrol engine is sheer magic,’ he said to me once. ‘Just imagine being able to take a thousand different bits of metal... and they will purr and hum and roar... they will make the wheels of a motor-car go whizzing round at fantastic speeds…’"
"You might think, if you didn’t know him well, that he was a stern and serious man. He wasn’t. He was actually a wildly funny person."
"Most wonderful of all was the feeling that when I went to sleep, my father would still be there, very close to me, sitting in his chair by the fire, or lying in the bunk above my own."
"Poaching is an art. A great poacher is a great artist."
"You’ve missed the point, Danny boy! You’ve missed the whole point! Poaching is such a fabulous and exciting sport that once you start doing it, it gets into your blood and you can’t give it up!"
"It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father. When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight."
"Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn’t be exciting if they didn’t."
"Keepers hardly move at all when they are in a wood watching for poachers, he had told me. They stand dead still right up against the trunk of a tree and it’s not easy to spot a motionless man in that position at twilight when the shadows are as dark as a wolf’s mouth."
"I felt sure something must have got broken when she jumped off the road on to the cart-track."
"It was the kind of trap hunters in Africa dig to catch wild animals."
"Do you know, Danny, that the cost of rearing and keeping one single pheasant up to the time when it’s ready to be shot is equal to the price of one hundred loaves of bread!"
"I saw him get out, and I also saw my old dog Bertie dozing on the doorstep. And do you know what that loathsome Victor Hazell did? Instead of stepping over old Bertie, he actually kicked him out of the way with his riding boot."
"It’s a great game, Doc Spencer said, sighing a little. ‘I only wish I was young enough to have another go at it.’"
"‘You tickle him.’ ‘Tickle him?’ ‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘Trout, you see, like to lie close in to the river bank."
"It’s a most marvellous thing to be able to go out and help yourself to your own apples whenever you feel like it."
"The fields, the streams, the woods and all the creatures who lived in these places were a part of his life."
"A teacher who touched your life was a teacher who taught you to love learning."
"You really think it would work? Yes, it'll work all right. With this method, we could prepare two hundred raisins."
"If this thing works, it will revolutionize poaching."
"The excitement of doing something that ought not to be done is often more exhilarating than the act itself."
"The trick with aniseed balls is never to bite them."
"The weasel is the bravest of all animals. The mother will fight to the death to defend her own children."
"Your mother was a great one for walking, Danny. And she would always bring something home with her to brighten up the caravan."
"One of the nice things about a Cox’s Orange Pippin’, my father said, ‘is that the pips rattle when it’s ripe. Shake it and you can hear them rattling."
"‘This happens to be a public footpath,’ my father said. ‘Kindly do not molest us.’"
"‘Isn’t it a marvellous thought though, Danny,’ my father said, ‘that there’s about two hundred pheasants at this very moment roosting up in those trees and already they’re beginning to feel groggy? Soon they’ll be falling out of the branches like raindrops!’"
"I’ve been wondering how a bird manages to keep its balance sitting on a branch when it’s asleep."
"My dear boy, we’re just beginning! Come in here."
"‘The most my dad ever got was fifteen and he was drunk for a week afterwards!’ he said. ‘But this… this, my dear boy, is an all-time world record!’"
"And you did it, Danny! The whole thing was your idea in the first place!"
"‘That’, my father said as we sat sipping our hot cocoa a few minutes later, ‘was the greatest time I’ve ever had in my whole life.’"
"Hail to thee, dear Danny, you’re the champion of the world!"
"All you need is a sheet to cover them and the baby sits on the sheet. A bunch of pheasants makes a nice soft mattress for any child."