Chris Van Allsburg Quotes

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Chris Van Allsburg

Profession : Author

Birth : June 18, 1949

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

I'm not surprised that my books appeal to adults.

Chris Van Allsburg

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?'

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Van Allsburg