Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

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.

I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

I refuse to lie to children.

I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago.

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.

I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.

The world is twice as crazy as it's ever been.

I remember how much - when I was a small boy I was taken to see a version of 'Peter Pan.' I detested it. I mean, the sentimental idea that anybody would want to remain a boy.

I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels.

If life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up.

I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.

My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.

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?

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.

I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?

I hate people.

I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.

I became a set designer for opera.

Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.

I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'

I'm a lucky buck.