Lynne Rae Perkins Quotes

In some ways I'm very structured.

I felt ten years old and a thousand years old, but I didn't know how to be my own age. I had never felt that way before, but now I feel like that a lot.

I love when I'm trying to do something I don't know how to do, and it kind of figures itself out along the way. And that means messing up a lot. That means throwing away a lot of drawings.

I started thinking about [ what book is going to go next] when I was working on As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth.

I do love that discovery of when you're trying to figure out how to make something work, and it happens in a way that you didn't predict.

It would look like a notebook with dividers, and there'd be different subjects and things [preschoolers] could do, so that they could feel like they were going to school also.

We had a dog, Lucky, who was fourteen years old. For the last year of his life, I would take him on these walks that were long but didn't cover much distance.

With most of my books, there are some parts that pop up right away, and other parts I have to wait for.

Ideas mostly come from the work itself. Often when I'm drawing, the words will be bouncing around in my head, and when I'm writing, ideas about the drawing happen.

I don't like things to be static when I'm working.

I do like to be surprised.

I'm structured with time.

It really does feel, partly because of graphic novels kids read, like there's a lot of freedom with how you can use both images and words, because we think in both of those ways.

I know if I did that [career as painter] all the time I would get tired of it.

If I could make a career out of drawing little girls hiding in corners, I would do really well.

I made a drawing for a book I'm working . It's a little drawing of a girl who's ashamed and upset and hides in the corner of the closet. It's the kind of drawing that I feel like I'm really good at.

I love that when you're writing your mind is sort of figuring things out on its own, without you directing it.

I don't want to make myself sound that spontaneous, because I'm not.

One of my favorite moments in that book [As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth] was when something happened that I had no idea was going to happen.

I'm heavily influenced by Edward Ardizzone, how he has people talking in little speech bubbles. I love those. And also Edward Gorey. Those are two of my favorite people.

I think we're conditioned by watching movies.

By the time I finished the book [All Alone in the Universe], Robin Roy was saying, "More pictures!"

I remember when I was working on All Alone in the Universe, and Robin Roy was my editor. When I first sent it to her, she said kids this age don't want pictures in their books.

I don't feel like it's something I invented myself, rather something I absorbed and continue to do.

I'm German, after all.

The morning time is also a time when I look at what I did yesterday. That's often a jumping-off point for today.

In the bedroom time I have generated thoughts, and then in the studio I take those thoughts and try to shape them into something.

I [drinking coffee] for about an hour, I get dressed and go down in my studio, and that's a different kind of working.

Some of it just involved thinking about, for example, the different kinds of science, what chemistry is.

I knew what infinity was. Being a previous art student, I knew about some art concepts.

I had a general outline of subjects. The way I start my days is my husband brings me a thermos of coffee up to the bedroom.

A long time ago, I had an idea to make a book for preschoolers who had older siblings who were going to school.

I generally have an idea where I want to go, but I don't know how I'm going to get there.

Step and land, step and land. That's all travel was. Throw in some running and a change of scenery. No big deal, right? And so, off he went. Off they went together.

Lenny’s face was smiling, too. For a minute they were both ten years old. Time travel in real life.

The trouble with being too careful about your wishes, though, was that you could end up with a wish so shapeless that it could come true and you wouldn’t even know it, or it wouldn’t matter.

A good story makes a journey go by more quickly. A really good story makes you forget you are even on a journey.