Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Chris Van Allsburg - Page 2

its not bad to be different. Sometimes it's the mark of being very very talented.

The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.

Some people may contend that there is no image more charming that a child holding a puppy or kitten. But for me that's a distant second. When I see a child clutching a book... to his or her tiny bosom, I'm moved. Children can possess a book in a way they can never possess a video game, a TV show, or a Darth Vader doll. A book comes alive when they read it. They give it life themselves by understanding it.

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

I pore over every word on the cereal box at breakfast, often more than once. You can ask me anything about shredded wheat.

Certain peer pressures encourage little fingers to learn how to hold a football instead of a crayon. I confess to having yielded to these pressures.

An award does not change the quality of a book.

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.

I have lots of ideas. The problem for me has always been which one to do.

If you don't know where you're going, stop racing to get there. -- from Just Desert by M. T. Anderson

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?

There must be something to think about at the end.

Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe.

I take my ideas from my experiences.