I don’t write a story and then do the illustrations. I have to know what’s going to be on every page. I do endless little sketches which represent pictures and text

God knows what the rules are to all this.

First, you’ve got to get the drawing absolutely right and then you can forget about that and concentrate on the colour.

The best preparation for my work now was the fact that I wasn't pressured as a child. Mucking about is essential for everybody.

I think that in order to be a successful writer for children you have to be able to communicate with a certain age group. I've stuck to a mental age of five.

There is nothing better than when a drawing works but when it doesn’t … this is the horror of the arts: because you have been doing it for 50 years, it doesn’t guarantee that you can ever make colour work again.

Picture book texts are 2,000 words pruned down to 80.

I never do anything differently because it’s for children. I am not trying to make a landscape that children can understand. I am just making a landscape.

Getting older makes you want to get on with your work, while there is still time.

Colour means absolutely nothing unless it is used to some effect.

As soon as you start to deliberately put messages across, it’s like a Seventh Day Adventist on the doorstep… you realise you are being got at. The 11th Commandment should have been ‘Thou Shalt Not Bore’.