Quentin Blake

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

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.

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

I think it is important for children to read different things to find out about their emotions and other people's emotions. It is an enormous source of education and culture.

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

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

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.

I love the sea, but I avoid any sort of seaside resort that has skyscrapers or seaside entertainments.

The hateful thing about most hotels nowadays is that they only have duvets. I hate duvets.

A lot of my travel is at least partly work, visiting schools and libraries, especially in France.

I don't feel as if I belong to an age group.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It was an accident of circumstance that I never married.

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 have an assistant who's very good at email, so I don't struggle with it.

I find that I can't work and listen to radio - either I find I don't like it and it distracts me, or I do like it and I want to listen to it.

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

Television is kind of a disappointment. I often want to watch it, but I find it quite hard - I don't like soaps, reality TV or celebrity chefs.