David Small

“Things like anatomy and drawing and design and color had pretty much been drop-kicked out of the curriculum in the '70s, when I was studying art, in favor of abstraction and minimalism.”

“I've always been interested in a certain kind of sophistication in children's literature. I loved Roald Dahl; I loved the underlying nastiness of some of his - darkness of his tales.”

“I'm deeply in love with my wife, and she's my best friend, and yet we share different viewpoints of life, which I think is one of the things that holds our marriage together. She came from Texas, and she has an optimistic view of life. I came from Detroit and have a very pessimistic view.”

“I don't like my parents; I never will. I didn't cry at either of their funerals. I haven't missed them for five seconds. I didn't - you know, our characters were so at odds with one another right from the beginning. But I do understand them now as human beings, with the understanding of an adult.”

“I just totally do not believe in this sort of Bart Simpson character who infects so much of our literature and film and TV stuff nowadays, these know-it-all kids who seem to understand the hypocrisy of the adult world so thoroughly and can talk about it with such articulateness. That's bunk.”

“To understand somebody else as a human being, I think, is about as close to real forgiveness as one can get.”

“Mama had her little cough. Once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight... Or the slamming of kitchen cupboard doors. That was her language.”

“My kids' books all have a darkness to them.”

“I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they have a way of putting them into words that makes them sensational.”

“I was in college in the sixties when movies really got good. I'm a fan of Bergman and Hitchcock and Polanski and Antonioni. Those are my gods.”