"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"

This quote by Eric Carle is a comparison between the process of composing an unique and a photo book. He is saying that authors begin with a 20 word concept and broaden it to 200,000 words, while picture book authors start with 200,000 words and decrease it to 20. This comparison highlights the distinctions in between the 2 kinds of composing. Novels are normally a lot longer than picture books, so the process of composing them is more involved. Authors have to come up with a lot of concepts and information to fill the pages, while photo book authors need to be more succinct and imaginative in order to tell a story in a restricted quantity of words. This quote also highlights the importance of editing and modifying in the composing process. Both novelists and photo book authors need to go through multiple drafts in order to produce a finished product.