Chris Van Allsburg

Your house is all about routine, not the unexpected events of your life. ”

I believe that there will be many things that happen to me in my life that I will not be able to explain. Some of those might be magic. I'm not sure. ”

My ideas are not meant to suggest dreams or reality, but a surreal quality. ”

I think, for the most part, our culture embraces that artists are born, not made. ”

They don't send people from large corporations to hire people to make sculptures. ”

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story. ”

I have very positive memories of reading biographies of unusual Americans as a child. ”

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. ”

It seems to me that not only the writing in most children's books condescends to kids, but so does the art. I don't want to do that. ”

When somebody says, 'This must be a children's book,' basically they're saying, 'You must be a child.' And so my answer is, 'Well, yes, I guess I am a child.' But I don't think of myself that way. ”