I think there is something barbaric in children, and it's missing in lots of books for them because we don't like to think of it. We want them to be happy [but] childhood is a very tough time.

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.

'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father.

I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence.

When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.

Art has always been my salvation.

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