I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.

When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.

Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot.

Quoth the raven nevermore.

I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.

Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker: A Meeting of the Macabre.