My brother, who was older, was the gifted one, much more talented than I.

I hate those e-books. They can not be the future... they may well be... I will be dead.

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.

Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.

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.

You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.