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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

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Jack Prelutsky
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: September 8
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Began
Poet
Read
Voice
Found
Didn
Children
Influenced
Writing
Poets

More quotes by Jack Prelutsky

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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
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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
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Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.
Jack Prelutsky
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I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once.
Jack Prelutsky
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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
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I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.
Jack Prelutsky
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I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Jack Prelutsky
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A poet is not something you become a poet is something you are.
Jack Prelutsky
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The sound of a word is at least as important as the meaning.
Jack Prelutsky
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.
Jack Prelutsky
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Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.
Jack Prelutsky
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Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.
Jack Prelutsky
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I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.
Jack Prelutsky
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We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.
Jack Prelutsky