Coming Home
by Charlotte Reads Classics
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten.
None of these things is important, but each of them made such a tremendous impression on me that I have never been able to get them out of my mind. Each of them, even after a lapse of fifty and sometimes sixty years, has remained seared on my memory.
I didn’t have to search for any of them. All I had to do was skim them off the top of my consciousness and write them down.
Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true.
– Roald Dahl, Boy: Tales From Childhood
Further proof that Roald Dahl has more inspiration and creativity in his pinky toe than most people experience in their entire lives. I love his take on autobiographies, and Boy is a wonderful read. I wish I could ‘skim things off the top of my consciousness’ as wonderfully as he does.
Me too, he was such a unique writer and person – great books when you are a child and just as good (and comforting!) as an adult.