56 Quotes by Anthony Browne

"I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack."

"I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was."

"I never want to make a child worried or afraid, and I don't think I do. My pictures are born from the belief that children are far more capable and aware of social complexities than we give them credit for."

"As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background."

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

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

"When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them."

"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."

"Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me."

"M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence."