There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

Kids lead a very private life.

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

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.

You can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely.