Jack Prelutsky

“I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.”

“I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.”

“I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.”

“There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.”

“I always knew would be some sort of artist, but didn't know what.”

“Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.”

“I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.”

“I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.”

“I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.I don't don't know why know why,I simply know that I I Iam am inclined to say to saya lot a lot this way this way-I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.My mom my mom gets mad gets mad,it irritates my dad my dad,it drives them up a tree a tree,that's what they tell they tell me me-I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.It gets me in a jam a jam,but that's the way I am I am,in fact I think it's neat it's neatto to to to repeat repeat-I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.”

“I'm never bored.”

“I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.”

“After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.”

“Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.”

“I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.”

“I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.”

“I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.”

“We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.”

“My wife used to tell me one of my best qualities was that my feet don't smell, but I remember my brother's did when we were kids.”

“Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.”