180 Quotes by Michael Leunig

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction.

Don't give in to hate - it puts you off balance

I give thanks for the fact that I can get this stick with a bit of steel nib on the end, dip it in some black carbon stuff, and draw on paper. Now, people did it the same way 2,000 years ago. And there's something lovely about that play, and making mud pies and a mess. That's a lovely privilege.

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

Have I got the right to experiment with my child's life?

I didn't mind my own company as a child; I was happy playing alone in the sandpit.

We may lose our memory as we get older, but this might not be such a bad thing - who wants to drag a mental junkyard around at a time of life when you're starting to grow interesting little wings?

Ah, whimsical. It's terrible the way words get attached to you like barnacles. As is what I do is acting on a 'whim'. If only these were gifts from God when I get an idea, but everything I have done that I really love has had a lot of hard work behind it.

The cartoonist’s task is not so much to be balanced as to give balance, particularly in situations of disproportionate power relationships such as we see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.