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.

I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.

Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.

If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people - I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images - the emotional quality - of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself - my dreaming life - still lives in the light of childhood.