Anthony Browne Quotes
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One day, I found my dad's dressing-gown in an old suitcase, and it transported me back to when I was five and thought he was a god or a superhero who could do anything. After that, I wrote my first positive book about fathers, about my dad.
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Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me.
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I grew up with an older brother who was always stronger and faster and better than me at everything, but I was close enough in age to try and compete, so we had a competitive childhood.
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Everyone can draw when they're five. Most of us lose the ability.
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Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
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My dad never decided what he wanted to do; at times he fought in the army, was a teacher, a boxer, a light engineer, and a then a publican. My mum was a traditional housewife and mother. They showed my brother and I unconditional love.
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Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.
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Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.
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Although I have two good Anglepoise lights, I much prefer to work by daylight.
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The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.
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Many adults that I have met in my time believed that picture books are 'babyish'. I hope I have changed minds on this, as I set out to do.
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Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists.
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Never forget that children are at the heart of everything we do. Respect them, listen to them, talk to them as equals, and care about them.
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A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.
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I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
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When I was a boy, I was a worrier, and so was my son, Joe. I used to tell him that worrying meant he had an imagination and that one day he'd be pleased.
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I grew up in Yorkshire, and once or twice a year, we'd travel over the Pennines to see my cousins in Cheshire.
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M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence.
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As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
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Children will come out and listen to a writer whose books they like. They don't need a government agency or a medal that says 'laureate' to continue that.
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Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do.
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The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely, there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.
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You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'.
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As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child.