Jon Scieszka Quotes

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme.

Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of.

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

I can make rhymes. My style of writing is kind of childlike anyway.

I'm a wizard at poetry.

I'm actually a true lyricist.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays.

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.

Lyricists play with words.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

You want to know how to rhyme, then learn how to add. It's mathematics.

I like poems that are little games.

But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.

People used to say poems were different to songs but I don't think they are.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I like poems that are complex.

There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.

My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.

I have never considered myself a poet. I have no interest in poetic artistry.