There was a great deal of peer recognition to be gained in elementary school by being able to draw well. One girl could draw horses so well, she was looked upon as a kind of sorceress.

There was a great deal of peer recognition to be gained in elementary school by being able to draw well. One girl could draw horses so well, she was looked upon as a kind of sorceress.

My ideas are not meant to suggest dreams or reality, but a surreal quality.

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.

I've always thought of the book as a visual art form, and it should represent a single artistic idea, which it does if you write your own material.

I have lots of ideas. The problem for me has always been which one to do.

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.