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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.