Quentin Blake quotes:

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

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

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

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

Being positive may be a character defect of mine.

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 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.

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

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

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

It was an accident of circumstance that I never married.

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

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

I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.