Author Quotes

All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

There was a great deal of peer recognition to be gained in elementary school by being able to draw well. One girl could draw horses so well, she was looked upon as a kind of sorceress.

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.

The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me.

Some artists claim praise is irrelevant in measuring the success of art, but I think it's quite relevant. Besides, it makes me feel great.

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head.

Following my muse has worked out pretty well so far. I can't see any reason to change the formula now.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

The Dick, Jane, and Spot primers have gone to that bookshelf in the sky. I have, in some ways, a tender feeling toward them, so I think it's for the best.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

As much as I'd like to meet the tooth fairy on an evening walk, I don't really believe it can happen.

It's one thing to reject the idea that it's a man's job to bring home all the bacon; it's another the 500th time your wife reaches for the check at dinner.

I save her marked-up manuscripts as an unluckier husband might save love letters.

For 10 years, I'd been working as a freelance writer and editor, making money but not a living. It was a good arrangement family-wise, allowing me to stay home with our daughter, but not so great financially or, sometimes, ego-wise.

To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.

Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

Circumstances do not determine a man, they reveal him.

A man is literally what he thinks.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results.

Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

We do not attract what we want, but what we are.

The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.

He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.