Anthony Browne Quotes
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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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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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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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Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures.
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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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Something happens to our creativity as we go through the education process; most of us lose touch with it.
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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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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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Writers are articulate. Artists find it more difficult.
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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'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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them.
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Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive.
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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.