Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think there's a lot of evolution that's happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.
Bumble-Ardy looks like a happy book. That's the funniest thing about it. But this was survival. I was working very hard to survive.
I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.
Pride in what and who you are is a strong foundation, but don't be defined by your oppression; use your anger, don't let it use you.
I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.
I sculpted for four or five years. Mostly for my own amusement, I decided to do a picture book, and that was kind of a turning point.
The crudest thing I've done as a teacher was to require students to write a national anthem for their country and sing it themselves.
What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.
It's almost impossible to reconcile the realities of how one feels during the day, hour by hour. But I approach things not cynically.
I'm getting to a point in my life where my whole attitude about the relationship between myself and the audience is totally different.
I never really thought of myself as an Asian-American cartoonist, any more than I thought of myself as a cartoonist who wears glasses.
All you leave the world is what you've done. No one will ever know the conditions, the comments, the pressures. Only the work remains.
I've heard stories about authors filled with this kind of Lotto-winner hubris. I'm a Dutch boy from the Midwest. We don't have hubris.
I like people. Humanity. My family is a part of my work. They contribute throughout the process with critiques, advice, opinions, etc.
Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown... There's something so hopelessly gross and vile about him it's hard to take him seriously.
I've had 'Spanish Flea' stuck in my head since 1998, so in a subjective sense, that is the song that's playing whenever I enter a room.
One of the by-products of being allowed to start my professional career prematurely is that the evolution of my work is really evident.
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.
William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.
The most impactful comics that I've read are the ones where the artists swung for the bleachers and tried to immerse you in their world.
Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting.
They can't expect anyone to actually pay for a shirt that says, 'I (picture of an elephant) the San Diego Zoo.' What does that even mean?
We found the bathrooms, which were labeled 'Aliens' and 'Femaliens.' 'Finally,' I said to J.Lo. 'Here's a bathroom you're allowed to use.
I think when I finally got it in my head that I was going to do the story, I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.
I would honestly be elated if I could wave a magic wand and eradicate my back catalog and then have a fresh crack at some of those ideas.
Can you really learn to knit from a diagram? Try it. Do you want to learn to ski or surf by yourself? You could drown or run into a tree.
I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever.
My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative.
I was just a guy who did adult or alternative comic books. And then suddenly to be, like, a New Yorker cover artist was a different thing.
Ninety percent of the time when I'm working, there's this very palpable sensation that I'm doing everything wrong and should just give up.
Some artists claim praise is irrelevant in measuring the success of art, but I think it's quite relevant. Besides, it makes me feel great.
A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting - the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story.
The theory of isolation of certain tasks in certain hemispheres of the brain suggests I shouldn't even be able to speak, never mind write.
In the future, I'd like to continue being honest with myself and admit when I'd be better off asking someone else to illustrate my writing.
I feel that what you should illustrate is the space between the words. It's the betweenness, the otherness, that gives depth and dimension.
The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.
I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten.
I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die.
People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the disappointment in their voice.
Talent! There's no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous hard work in the right way.
To believe in faeries is to step into an enchanted space where the rational mind meets the irrational heart, and all things become possible.
Peter Rabbit's not a rabbit. Peter Rabbit is a proxy for the child who reads the book, and they imagine themselves in the rabbit's position.
I have many who keep me going, I am very fortunate in this sense. There is nothing like a child who knows more about your books than you do!
I don't read anything anymore. I don't have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that's all. I think I've read everything that's worth reading.
I don't want a lot of people nosing round my studio and bothering me. I don't want to see them at all. Let the dealers have all that bother.
In the same way that a mundane object can have a personality somehow, I try to suggest that a mundane setting can have some menace behind it.
I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.
In that moment, the machinery of the world lined up. Somewhere a clock struck midnight, and Hugo's future seemed to fall perfectly into place.
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?
I'm not Hans Christian Anderson. Nobody's gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won't have it, okay?