Michael Morpurgo War Quotations

War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.

Marry someone who flatters you. Because I've written 80 books since 'War Horse' but when my wife reads one, all she says is, 'It's quite good, but it's not as good as 'War Horse,' is it?'

I tell you, my friends,’ he said one day. ‘I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It’s the others that are mad, but they don’t know it. They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t 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 it’s me they call mad!

This one isn’t just any old horse. There’s 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, there’s 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 don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.

But 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.

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.