Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets.

Ever since I was very young, as far back as I can remember, I have loved making pictures. I knew even as a child that, when I grew up, I would be an artist of some kind. The lovely feeling of my pencil touching paper, a crayon making a star shape in my sketchbook, or my brush dipping into bright and colorful paints — these things affect me as joyfully today as they did all those years ago.

The hardest part is developing the idea, and that can take years

You know, now it's sinking in. It's taken me a long time to realize - and it is sinking in - how important this book is. And I have a certain distance now. I've done it such a long time ago.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear was kind of my first important book

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.

Papa, please get the moon for me.