Words matter. These are the best Brian Selznick Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I’m just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I’m trying to make the best story I possibly can.
I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I’m writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I’m lucky to have her.
I guess I see a part of myself in everyone I write about. I tend to write about kids who are obsessed with something, and even though I have never been good with machines the way Hugo is, I did love miniature things when I was a kid.
I think I always knew that I would do something with art because it was the one thing that I knew I was really good at.
Once I’m given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don’t have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.
I think everything belongs in a certain place, for kids who feel they don’t belong anywhere. A museum is an institution like a library where everything has a place, everything belongs.
It’s fun to see how other artists adapt my work.
I think from an early age I was aware of how a camera can tell a story, how a movie camera can affect how the narrative is told.
A friend suggested that I get a job at a children’s book store so I could meet kids and read books, and that turned out to be the single best bit of advice I’ve ever gotten.
A lot of people who don’t write for kids think it’s easy, because they think kids aren’t as smart as they are, or that you have to dumb down what you would normally write for kids. But I think you have to work harder when you write for kids, to make sure every word is right, that it’s there for the right reason.
The orphan in children’s literature allows the child protagonist to move the story forward themselves. I think that, however happy a family, every intelligent child thinks: ‘How did I come to be born to these parents?’ – it is about finding your place in the world.
I’ve always loved the wild rumpus in ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak, because the words disappear, the pictures take up the whole page, and we move forward in the story by turning the pages.
Since I spend such a long time making each book, I only choose books that I’m really interested in and that I really love.
A lot of times, people complain about how books and stories change when they’re translated to the screen. But I think sometimes people forget that a lot of changes have to be made because we’re not in a book when we’re watching a movie.
I definitely think my work comes from things that I liked as a kid, and things I still like now. Monsters and magic and museums and movies, a lot of things that start with ‘M’ for some reason.
