Quentin Blake

“I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously.”

“If you want to read and you want to draw, that helps you to express yourself.”

“I draw every day - unless I'm being interviewed.”

“I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?”

“I think it is the fact that birds are two-legged, like us, which gives them something of our balance and gesture and makes them nearer to us.”

“Guinea pigs are quite difficult to draw, I think, because they're so furry.”

“Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.”

“I don't have anything interesting to conceal or reveal in my private life, and it is really only my work and professional life that I want to talk about.”

“I don't like leaving work behind. I hate the idea that something might be happening on the drawing board at home that I am going to miss.”

“As an illustrator you need to understand the human body - but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you've seen and what you imagine.”

“With my pictures, what I hope is that it encourages the reader to imagine more pictures of his own.”

“I know some children's writers write for specific children, or for the children they once were, but I never have. I just thought children might like my sort of visual humour.”

“I've never quite worked out how to do holidays. I've got a house in France which I suppose is a kind of holiday house. But it's really only so I can go on drawing when I get there. I'm never far away from the feeling that I want to be getting on with something.”

“I'm trained as a teacher; that's the only thing I've got a certificate for.”

“Sometimes I think people get into trouble because they can't say what they want to.”

“It was an accident of circumstance that I never married.”

“You see, I don't draw from life at all, but I do look out of my window a lot.”

“Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.”

“Sometimes people think drawing and painting is mucking about when actually it is a highly skilled activity.”

“Going to hospital is rather like going to an alien planet.”