I don't really sit at the computer from scratch. I prefer to get my ideas in my fingers and I write longhand first.

I don't think anything is as magical as a fairy tale experience by a child.

I always hesitate to call myself a children's poet, and I always hesitate to call what I write for children poetry. Though a few of the verses that I've written, yes, I think they are truly poems.

I have my faithful rhyming dictionary that sits up there on my desk, but I have to tell you, there are very few new rhymes that I didn't think of. I often just go right through the alphabet in my head when I'm looking for a rhyme.

I've always been a morning person, and what I don't get done in the morning I really don't get done at all.

A poem really does recreate the language, and that's what it has to do. A true poem, I think, has to give you that shiver. That, "yes, it's never been said quite that way before."

I am a Leo. I was born in August and I love the sunshine. I'm like a cat. We live in a very contemporary house with windows all around it. Wherever a sunspot is, I go to it with my yellow pad and my fountain pen and I write there.