Michael Foreman Quotes

When coming in to land at Santiago, Chile, I saw the area between the city and the Andes mountains was smoking with rubbish dumps. While exploring the dumps, I made friends with people living and working there and saw how they survived through recycling the rubbish.

From an early age, I had always loved drawing. Laying on the floor, in front of the fire, drawing from my imagination, marching soldiers, dive bombers, spaceships and monsters. Now, suddenly, I was drawing from real life!

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

In big battle scenes, like 'King Arthur', you see the knights in all their fine armour, but they're not in the thick of it: follow the perspective, and you'll find some poor little sod, who didn't want to be there, anyway, with his head split.

When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world.

Things have to be believable, not in a literal, photographic sense, but in an emotional sense - capturing the essence of the situation.

For me, travelling and drawing the world, experiencing as much as possible first hand, has been very important. Making notes, drawing and writing on the move, became second nature.

I didn't read children's books when I was a child. The only books in our house were ration books.