Top 15 Quotes by Debi Gliori

My job is not to frighten children, but sometimes addressing fears and concerns within the safe boundaries of a picture book can fill me with an awesome responsibility to be as truthful and transparent as possible.

Despite the fact the studio looks out of five windows onto a picture perfect view of sky, hills and wide open spaces, I work with my blinds firmly drawn, daylight filtered through their white canvas, a painterly northern light falling through two big skylights above my table, and nothing visible outside to distract me.

No ideas are harmed in the making of my books, by the way. All I do with my best ideas is run with them, fast as I can, taking notes and occasionally suggesting a left hand turn rather than the right hand one which might have taken us both over a precipice.

For me, stories were brothers, sisters and friends, filling the long hours between childhood and adolescence, holding up a true mirror in which I might find out who I was rather than a distorted reflection of who I was expected to become.

Growing up a lonely only child prepared me for the years of solitude spent as a writer; years spent in the company of people who don't exist, imaginary people you have conversations with. It's a paid form of madness, this writing stuff.