One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world.

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.

I’m not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody’s gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won’t have it, okay?

William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

To get a child's trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. They're so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.

And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!