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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

'The Polar Express' began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, 'What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?'

A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting - the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story.

As long as I can remember, I've always loved to draw. But my interest in drawing wasn't encouraged very much.

As the years went by I became a writer and illustrator, although exclusively of fantasies.

Authors of books are not given very much control over the films that are made from their books.

Brainstorming, for me, takes place in my bed at night between the time I turn out my lights and I finally fall asleep. It is not a very violent storm, but what's happening is I am just thinking about different ideas and maybe things I've seen that day that I think might make a good story.

Even the most complicated stories start with a very simple premise.

Growing up in the 1950s, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, boys were supposed to be athletic.

I am never really surprised at the way my books take shape. They are just not as perfect as I'd like them to be.

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.

I don't know if what kids really want is a hamster. What they want is a dog. So the hamster ends up being a substitute: 'Well, would you accept this?'

I don't like to get scared - it's not one of the emotions I enjoy. So I have to assume that if there are scary things in my books, they aren't very scary.

I don't like to travel. Yet all my books seem to involve a journey.

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

I like the gizmos that transport people.

I love the idea of a tiny window between the back stoop and the pantry, where the milkman would pass through the cheese. But of course, there is no milkman anymore. So somebody coming by the house and seeing the window would say, 'Oh, that must be original, because that's where the milkman passed the cheese through to the pantry.'

I sculpted for four or five years. Mostly for my own amusement, I decided to do a picture book, and that was kind of a turning point.

I think it's difficult to forget things that are unresolved.

I think parents generally know what's best for their children. But I suppose it's possible to be overprotective.

I was about 28-29 when I wrote my first story, and that was called 'The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.'

I'm always a bit disappointed when I've finished working on a book.

I'm not a perfectionist. I'm just very observant.

I'm sensitive to the things I see.

I've always thought of the book as a visual art form, and it should represent a single artistic idea, which it does if you write your own material.

I've heard stories about authors filled with this kind of Lotto-winner hubris. I'm a Dutch boy from the Midwest. We don't have hubris.

If I'm not working on something, I'm eager to work on something because it's so gratifying.

In the same way that a mundane object can have a personality somehow, I try to suggest that a mundane setting can have some menace behind it.

It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.

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.

It was the case for a number of years that I was doing a book a year, but that was back when I was part-time teaching - and since 1991, I've been a parent, so that cuts into the time!

My stories are often a little mysterious.

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.

Peter Rabbit's not a rabbit. Peter Rabbit is a proxy for the child who reads the book, and they imagine themselves in the rabbit's position.

The crudest thing I've done as a teacher was to require students to write a national anthem for their country and sing it themselves.

The general effect of viewing 'Jumanji' is thrilling. I was able to see on film a thing that at one point had only existed in my imagination. I got to see the images from my book come alive.

The theory of isolation of certain tasks in certain hemispheres of the brain suggests I shouldn't even be able to speak, never mind write.

The whole idea of being mesmerized and not in control of your own actions is fascinating and a little spooky. I remember hearing about someone who'd gone to a magic act, and a person in the audience had become hypnotized by observing too closely what magician was doing on stage, and thought it was spooky to lose your consciousness that way.