But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.

I have been drawing all my life.

But I don't sit down and think: this is meant for children.

Miffy has changed quite a lot since the early books, although I never realised it at the time.

Right at the beginning, I didn't know if Miffy was a boy or girl.

Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books.

I thought it was amazing to work with authors, to get a manuscript and try to make up a cover for it.

Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.

I come from a family of business people, but I had the idea I wanted to become an artist.

I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.

When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents!

My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!

Before he went to sleep, I told him a little story about a rabbit we saw run around the beach house we rented.

Each book first begins with a little idea.

But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

There's nothing worse than talking about yourself to find out that you're not that interesting.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.

Love is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears; hatred is nothing.

Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Bright light is injurious to those who see nothing.

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.

You either love or you hate. You live in the middle, you get nothing.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

I don't know nothing about communism. But I know the Albanians loved me. Same reason as anyone else loves me. Because I made them laugh.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.