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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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