Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.

What I try to do in my picture books is to be all-inclusive, but not exclusive, to not exclude the kid and not exclude the parents from the experience. And it's not a very easy task; you can't find stories that work that way too much of the time.

I think all kids feel that their lives are tough, and that they've, been given an unfair shake for one reason or another. So I think there's a lot of kids who relate to my story. They also relate to the fact that I got out of it. And I tell them that my refuge from all that was books - the library was my safe place. And the art room was my safe place because there I knew what I was doing.

I don't like my parents; I never will. I didn't cry at either of their funerals. I haven't missed them for five seconds. I didn't - you know, our characters were so at odds with one another right from the beginning. But I do understand them now as human beings, with the understanding of an adult.

Even after the age of 50 it was impossible for me to see my mother as a human being. I felt she was a monster, and she had subtly been influencing my behavior and my thoughts and my dreams for so long that she was kind of a monster; she was a demon. And when I brought her back to life, I could feel that malevolent presence around me again, that woman who was totally incapable of giving nurturing to anybody, and, you know, her selfishness and her withdrawn indifference to everything but her own needs.

.... When you have no voice, you don't exist

I'm a reader. I like - I'm a great reader. I keep going back, though, to certain authors, just like I love film, but I keep going back to just five or six certain filmmakers. In literature I like Chekhov, for example; I think he's my favorite. And Flaubert - you know, that kind of concision. But I also like Tolstoy; I love those romances that, you know, weigh 500 pounds and take months and months and months to read.