Quotes from Anthony Browne

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.

As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.

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.

I didn't have picture books - there weren't many around when I was a child.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me.

Something happens to our creativity as we go through the education process; most of us lose touch with it.

Although I have two good Anglepoise lights, I much prefer to work by daylight.

M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence.

I use a little brush only for really small details. Over the years, I've started to use a much larger brush.

Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.

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.

The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.