As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.

A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.

You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'.

Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.

Never forget that children are at the heart of everything we do. Respect them, listen to them, talk to them as equals, and care about them.

Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations.

I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.

After art college, I got a job as a medical illustrator, and I was pretty good. I had to imagine what was going on in the operations because the photographs just showed a mess.

When I was a boy, I was a worrier, and so was my son, Joe. I used to tell him that worrying meant he had an imagination and that one day he'd be pleased.

Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists.

The nurse snorted, and said. “All men are pigs.” “Not all men.” Jango said. “Some of the men are zombies.

Millionaires don't play the blame game but the gain game.

I love all life as my own. Therefore, I say, you're my very own. But am I, an infidel who does not believe in your ism, also your own?

Every garden scheme should have a backbone, a central idea beautifully phrased. Every wall, path, stone and flower should have its relationship to the central idea.

People who hate cats, will come back as mice in their next life.

I’m trying to accept where I’m at, not run from it.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them jokes against yourself. If you praise yourself, your stories aren't funny.

This is my time, this is my hour, This is my pain, this is my name, this is my power. If it's my reign, then it's my shower, This pole position...I made a lane 'cause they blocked ours.

It is no use. I find it impossible to work with security staring me in the face.