"With me, everything begins with writing. No pictures at all—you just shut the Polaroid off; you..."

“With me, everything begins with writing. No pictures at all—you just shut the Polaroid off; you don’t want to be seduced by pictures because then you begin to write for pictures. Images come in language, language, language: in phrases, in verbal constructs, in poetry, whatever. I’ve never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished—when my editor thinks it’s finished—do I begin the pictures. Then I put the film in my head.”

- Maurice Sendak