Anthony Browne Quotes

All the pictures I could never do, I'll do it in comics. All the comics I do are the pictures I could never do.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

Well, I'm always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out.

I am a 'made' cartoonist, but I was born a comic.

I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.

The exciting thing about doing art for someone else's story is how I can translate their world through pictures, and that's always a pretty big challenge.

I'm a writer who just happens to draw.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

Fiction is about telling a good story, first and foremost. But of course, everything I'm interested in or angry about leaks into my writing, from art to violence against women.

I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a spy story, a space story and a football story.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

The great thing about making picture books is that you can make absolutely anything you want happen. It's a bit like making a film, but you don't need lots of money for actors and costumes - you just need pens, paper, and your imagination.

For me, who loves to draw and who loves to write and cannot choose between one or the other, the comic is the best form.

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

Being a talented artist is good, it's nice, but it's not the most important thing. I think being a good storyteller, having a good idea, a good gag, is probably more important than being a great artist.

There was a long stint during my childhood after I gave up on being a pro football player - we're talking sixth grade here - that I strongly considered a future writing and drawing comic books. I have been making stuff up ever since.

I'm interested in illustration in all its forms. Not only in books for children but in posters, prints and performance as a way of drawing people into books and stories.

A comic can be aesthetically beautiful. I think they captured it beautifully and accurately.

When I realized that people actually wrote comics, that it was a job people could do, I thought, 'Gee, these things are only 17 pages long! I could probably finish one of those and find out whether I suck before I've spent five years of my life on it.' In stumbling into comics that way, I discovered that I loved the form.

I love being an illustrator because I get to read really great stories, work with amazing people, travel and see places I never would've seen. And I get to draw all the time.

When I was at college, the idea of fashion was more immediate to me, whereas art photography, the depth of it, was a different thing. Storytelling - fanciful storytelling - can only be told through fashion photography. It's the perfect way to play with fantasy and dreams.

That's the most amazing thing about writing, whether it's in prose or comics: that you can create something from nothing, and suddenly they come to life, like they've always been there.

That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.