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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

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.

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

I'm never bored.

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

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 its Halloween

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.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home.

Collectively, we must do more than simply watch, with resignation and a feeling of powerlessness, reports on the evening news about the latest terrorist atrocity.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

South Koreans who have seen and praised the mass games should remember the hardship of tearful children. Teachers drive them hard with curses and orders to repeat and repeat. When the children return home in the evening, they can hardly walk.

Remember that God under the Law ordained a Lamb to be offered up to Him every Morning and Evening.

In the evening of the first day my father conducted us to the public baths.

The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.

In the morning we received some very thin coffee. For lunch we had potato soup with a few pieces of meat in it, in the evening we had a very thin meat soup with some potatoes in it.

The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.

The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.

There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.

I spent an entire evening seated between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, being charmed from either side. It was pure Hollywood magic.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

It felt good doing a physical job, and going home each evening feeling like I had really done a day's work.

That match was late evening and I had the experience of the electricity of the Centre Court because it was packed, a full house for the whole match. It had been a great year for me, first time there and I had the full taste of Wimbledon.

After tea it's back to painting - a large poplar at dusk with a gathering storm. From time to time instead of this evening painting session I go bowling in one of the neighbouring villages, but not very often.

Be able to suffer wearing a necktie or slightly high heels for an entire evening without complaint or early removal.

I was taken to concerts when I was six, seven years old, and sat in a box throughout the whole evening.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.