“People think, Hey, I love kids, I want to write children’s books. But they think children are happy. That’s their first mistake. [Messinger, Jonathan. “Guilt for dinner: The Mo Willems interview.” Hipsqueak. 5 May 2011. Web. 18 November 2011.]”

“We all have to share this world. The best way to do that is to be nice to each other.”

“One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about.”

“I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief… I’m not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world.[Washington Post interview, 19 February 2001]”

“When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.[The New York Times interview, 2000]”

“Long before we even lose our lives, we lose our souls. Tragic but true. Some carry on—willing to make the sacrifices, putting what is perceived as important before anything else. Some tread into the dark—wasting moments of grace, letting themselves suffer from their own decisions or the other’s domination. Some continue to love, give too much, and not leave even a little love for themselves.”

“You have made the moon,” The Jester said. “That is the moon.”