The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going. How can the world just keep on going? An earthquake in India kills a thousand people, and the world keeps on going. A famine in China kills a million people, and the world keeps on going. The twin towers of the World Trade Center buckle and fall, and the world, the world keeps on going.

Wouldn't want to miss a war, would I?

I suppose, the natural outgrowth about writing about two friends, it becomes about their friendship, and the complexities of it, and the way personality plays off each other, and what they each like to do, separately and together.

I don't think we [with Kate DiCamillo] intended to write a book about friendship, I think we intended to write a book about two friends.

You are most powerful when you are most silent.

What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other...?

Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.