Eric Carle Quotes

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar” story is about hope. You, like the little caterpillar, will grow up, unfold your wings and fly off into the future

  Eric Carle

  Growing Up, Wings, Stories

  103 Copy quote

• Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets.

  Eric Carle

  Life, Art, Sunset

  88 Copy quote

• We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.

  Eric Carle

  Beautiful, Art, Eye

  48 Copy quote

• Ever since I was very young, as far back as I can remember, I have loved making pictures. I knew even as a child that, when I grew up, I would be an artist of some kind. The lovely feeling of my pencil touching paper, a crayon making a star shape in my sketchbook, or my brush dipping into bright and colorful paints — these things affect me as joyfully today as they did all those years ago.

  Eric Carle

  Stars, Children, Artist

  50 Copy quote

• The hardest part is developing the idea, and that can take years

  Eric Carle

  Years, Ideas, Hardest

  21 Copy quote

• On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon That night he had a stomach ache.

  Eric Carle

  Night, Pie, Ice Cream

  Eric Carle (2016). “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, p.19, Penguin

  74 Copy quote

• One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.

  Eric Carle

  Morning, Sunday, Eggs

  Eric Carle (2016). “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, p.7, Penguin

  41 Copy quote

• He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. He stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and... he was a beautiful butterfly!

  Eric Carle

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Two

  Eric Carle (2016). “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, p.24, Penguin

  37 Copy quote

• Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20

  Eric Carle

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  27 Copy quote

• They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them.

  Eric Carle

  Children, School, Simple

  26 Copy quote

• Papa, please get the moon for me.

  Eric Carle

  Moon, Papa, Please

  Eric Carle (1998). “Stories for All Seasons”, Simon & Schuster

  18 Copy quote

• One day I think it's the greatest idea ever that I'm working on. The next day I think it's the worst that I've ever worked on - and I swing between that a lot. Some days I'm very happy with what I'm doing, and the next day I am desperate - it's not working out!

  Eric Carle

  Thinking, Swings, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear was kind of my first important book

  Eric Carle

  Book, Important, Firsts

  11 Copy quote

• You know, now it's sinking in. It's taken me a long time to realize - and it is sinking in - how important this book is. And I have a certain distance now. I've done it such a long time ago.

  Eric Carle

  Distance, Book, Taken

  12 Copy quote

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