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The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

It seems like a totally gratuitous myth to tell people a giant rabbit comes round at night leaving candy in a haphazard way around the house... and the cover shows the bunny caught in the act.

I have to think as Bugs Bunny, not of Bugs Bunny.

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.

Peter Rabbit's not a rabbit. Peter Rabbit is a proxy for the child who reads the book, and they imagine themselves in the rabbit's position.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?'

This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English.