Anthony Browne Quotes
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As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child.
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I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was.
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I didn't have picture books - there weren't many around when I was a child.
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Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations.
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Most of the day I work standing up, as I once read somewhere that it's the best position for the back.
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The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.
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I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash.
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As adults, we've seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking. Young children tend to look more carefully.
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I played rugby from the age of 10 until my late twenties; an unlikely player - small, quiet, long-haired and 'wiry.'
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I see 'Hansel and Gretel' as a breakthrough book for me, and one of the reasons is because I started to apply meaning to the hidden details.
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I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.
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Writers are articulate. Artists find it more difficult.
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Something happens to our creativity as we go through the education process; most of us lose touch with it.
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As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background.
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After art college, I got a job as a medical illustrator, and I was pretty good. I had to imagine what was going on in the operations because the photographs just showed a mess.
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I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack.
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What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.
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I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.
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Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life.
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Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.
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Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.
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I never want to make a child worried or afraid, and I don't think I do. My pictures are born from the belief that children are far more capable and aware of social complexities than we give them credit for.
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One of my main decisions when accepting the job of Children's Laureate was that I must continue working on picture books. If I don't write and illustrate for some time, then I begin to question who I am.
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Pictures are as evocative to me as smells.