I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format.

When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents!

Each book first begins with a little idea.

Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.

I have been drawing all my life.

I come from a family of business people, but I had the idea I wanted to become an artist.

But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.

I thought it was amazing to work with authors, to get a manuscript and try to make up a cover for it.

My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!

Don’t be sorry for the truth. A harsh truth is less damaging than a tender lie, and the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.

I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.

Let us turn to our own childhoods-no further-if we will renew our sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.

Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.

What I know is my music gets blamed for school shootings.

Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel.

I was painfully initiated into boxing, because the guys I fought were a lot bigger than me.

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men but from doing something worthwhile.

In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!