Quotes from Lynne Rae Perkins

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.

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

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

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

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

I'm structured with time.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Maybe the grass is greener on the other side depends who was standing in it. Sometimes you have to go over there and look.

I know I'm still young and there's a lot of time for things to happen, but sometimes I think there is something about me that's wrong, that I'm not the kind of person anyone can fall in love with, and that I'll always just be alone.

They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out in the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off.

Their secrets inadvertently sidestepped each other, unaware, like blindfolded elephants crossing the tiny room.

She was thinking that the grass really could be greener on the other side of the fence. It depended on who wa standing in the grass. Maybe you had to go take a look

He was thinking that maybe love was like starting a fire with two sticks. You've always heard that it's possible, but how likely is it?

Whatever her name was, she was pretty. She had a thick, careless braid of chestnut hair, a quick smile, and dark, merry eyes. She wore some kind of a fuzzy lavender pullover, and when she crossed her legs and lifted her guitar onto her lap, she had an interesting way of tucking the foot of the bottom leg back under her chair that made Hector feel melty. He looked away in self-preservation.

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

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