“Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.”

“Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.”

“The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day....It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis.”

“If there's anything I'm proud of in my work--it's not that I draw better; there's so many better graphic artists than me--or that I write better, no. It's--and I'm not saying I know the truth, because what the hell is that? But what I got from Ruth and Dave, a kind of fierce honesty, to not let the kid down, to not let the kid get punished, to not suffer the child to be dealt with in a boring, simpering, crushing-of-the-spirit kind of way.”

“You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them. ”

“Can you draw a picture on the blackboard when somebody doesn't want you to? asked the rooster promptly."Yes," answered Kenny," if you write them a very nice poem.""What is an only goat?" "A lonely goat," answered Kenny.The rooster shut one eye and looked at Kenny."can you hear a horse on the roof?" he asked."If you know how to listen in the night," said Kenny."Can you fix a broken promise?""Yes," said Kenny,"if it only looks broken,but really isn't."The rooster drew his head back into his feathers and whispered, "What is a very narrow escape?""When somebody almost stops loving you," Kenny whispered back.”

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”