"You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them."

"The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?"

"I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life is devoted."

"How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it"

"I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly... and I want it to be for my brother."

"I don't know how to write a children's book."

"I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'"

"I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures."

"I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself."

"As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination."