Jack Prelutsky Quotes
"When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Children, Now, Poets, Voice, Want, Writing)
"We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Books, Difference, Poems, Writing)
"Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Imagination)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Brother, Wife, Feet, Kids)
"Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry)
"I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poets)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Life, May, Now)
"I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once."
- Jack Prelutsky
"I'm never bored."
- Jack Prelutsky
"I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: First, Poems)
"I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it."
- Jack Prelutsky
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry, Prose, Reading, Trouble)
"I always knew would be some sort of artist, but didn't know what."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Artist)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Idea, Evening, Pen, Poems)
"My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Books, Computer, Facts, Reading, Teaching)
"I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry, English, Language)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Friend, Animals, Birds, Fun, Months, Poems)
"I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Writing)
"Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry, Career, Children, Fun, Old, Writing)
"Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Poetry, Children, Words)
"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."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Music, Fun, Guitar, Will, Writing)