Quentin Blake Quotes

I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?

- Quentin Blake

I'm trained as a teacher; that's the only thing I've got a certificate for.

- Quentin Blake

I love the sea, but I avoid any sort of seaside resort that has skyscrapers or seaside entertainments.

- Quentin Blake

I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously.

- Quentin Blake

Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.

- Quentin Blake

As an illustrator you need to understand the human body - but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you've seen and what you imagine.

- Quentin Blake

I do like children, but only as people. Not as if they're a special category.

- Quentin Blake

Guinea pigs are quite difficult to draw, I think, because they're so furry.

- Quentin Blake

I don't like leaving work behind. I hate the idea that something might be happening on the drawing board at home that I am going to miss.

- Quentin Blake

I think it is important for children to read different things to find out about their emotions and other people's emotions. It is an enormous source of education and culture.

- Quentin Blake

Sometimes people think drawing and painting is mucking about when actually it is a highly skilled activity.

- Quentin Blake

It was an accident of circumstance that I never married.

- Quentin Blake

I have an assistant who's very good at email, so I don't struggle with it.

- Quentin Blake

The hateful thing about most hotels nowadays is that they only have duvets. I hate duvets.

- Quentin Blake

Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.

- Quentin Blake

Going to hospital is rather like going to an alien planet.

- Quentin Blake

I don't feel as if I belong to an age group.

- Quentin Blake

I've never quite worked out how to do holidays. I've got a house in France which I suppose is a kind of holiday house. But it's really only so I can go on drawing when I get there. I'm never far away from the feeling that I want to be getting on with something.

- Quentin Blake

Being positive may be a character defect of mine.

- Quentin Blake

A lot of my travel is at least partly work, visiting schools and libraries, especially in France.

- Quentin Blake

Television is kind of a disappointment. I often want to watch it, but I find it quite hard - I don't like soaps, reality TV or celebrity chefs.

- Quentin Blake

I know some children's writers write for specific children, or for the children they once were, but I never have. I just thought children might like my sort of visual humour.

- Quentin Blake

You see, I don't draw from life at all, but I do look out of my window a lot.

- Quentin Blake

I think it is the fact that birds are two-legged, like us, which gives them something of our balance and gesture and makes them nearer to us.

- Quentin Blake

I don't have anything interesting to conceal or reveal in my private life, and it is really only my work and professional life that I want to talk about.

- Quentin Blake

If you want to read and you want to draw, that helps you to express yourself.

- Quentin Blake

With my pictures, what I hope is that it encourages the reader to imagine more pictures of his own.

- Quentin Blake

I draw every day - unless I'm being interviewed.

- Quentin Blake