Quotes from Anthony Browne

Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life.

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.

One day, I found my dad's dressing-gown in an old suitcase, and it transported me back to when I was five and thought he was a god or a superhero who could do anything. After that, I wrote my first positive book about fathers, about my dad.

Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.

I grew up in Yorkshire, and once or twice a year, we'd travel over the Pennines to see my cousins in Cheshire.

Pictures are as evocative to me as smells.

As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child.

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.

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.

The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely, there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.

Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations.

My dad never decided what he wanted to do; at times he fought in the army, was a teacher, a boxer, a light engineer, and a then a publican. My mum was a traditional housewife and mother. They showed my brother and I unconditional love.

A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.

Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do.

From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew.

Most of the day I work standing up, as I once read somewhere that it's the best position for the back.

Never forget that children are at the heart of everything we do. Respect them, listen to them, talk to them as equals, and care about them.

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.

I played rugby from the age of 10 until my late twenties; an unlikely player - small, quiet, long-haired and 'wiry.'

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.

Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive.

I grew up with an older brother who was always stronger and faster and better than me at everything, but I was close enough in age to try and compete, so we had a competitive childhood.

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.

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.