Writing is a journey of discovery because until you start, you never know what will happen, and you can be surprised by what you do - expect the unexpected!

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time.

I'd love to collaborate with a writer, but I'm such a control freak, it might be difficult.

I do tend to use watercolors - I love the splatter sort of thing you can do with watercolors.

I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.

Trust is the conduit for influence; it's the medium through which ideas travel.

Growing up in a rural setting in Minnesota, I was raised with the outdoors and a sense of adventure.

I grew up in the '80s, and you had these original, big-budget sci-fi adventure things all the time, not based on any source material - you'd have 'Gremlins,' 'Back to the Future,' 'E.T.' 'Ghostbusters,' the list goes on and on. I would love it so much if 'Pacific Rim' was but the first in a new wave of that sort of thing.