Jack Prelutsky Quotes

#1. His blood is black and boiling hot, he gurgles ghastly groans. He'll cook you in his dinner pot, your skin, your flesh, your bones.

Jack Prelutsky

#2. I'm never bored.

Jack Prelutsky

#3. 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

#4. 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

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

Jack Prelutsky

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

Jack Prelutsky

#7. In masks and gown we haunt the street
And knock on doors for trick or treat
Tonight we are the king and queen,
For oh tonight it's Halloween!

Jack Prelutsky

#8. I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once.

Jack Prelutsky

#9. 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

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

Jack Prelutsky

#11. 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

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

Jack Prelutsky

#13. 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

#14. I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.

Jack Prelutsky

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

Jack Prelutsky

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

Jack Prelutsky

#17. 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

#18. We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.

Jack Prelutsky

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

Jack Prelutsky

#20. Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

Jack Prelutsky

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. If you don't believe in dragons,
It is curiously true
That the dragons you disparage
Choose to not believe in you.

Jack Prelutsky

#25. She comes by night, in fearsome flight, in garments black as pitch, the queen of doom upon her broom, the wild and wicked witch.

Jack Prelutsky

#26. The sound of a word is at least as important as the meaning.

Jack Prelutsky

#27. I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

Jack Prelutsky

#28. A poet is not something you become; a poet is something you are.

Jack Prelutsky

#29. The BALLPOINT PENGUINS, black and white,
Do little else but write and write.
Although they've nothing much to say,
They write and write it anyway ...

Jack Prelutsky

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

Jack Prelutsky

#31. 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

#32. You're nasty and you're loud,
you're mean enough for two,
If I could be a cloud,
I'd rain all day on you.

Jack Prelutsky