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.

You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.

Our rule was that we [with Kate DiCamillo] would write everything together, literally every word.

Kate [DiCamillo] tends to be more reluctant about change. I convinced her to give it a try and she came over.

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'll live in another world, then.

We had so much fun together as friends that I suggested we [with Kate DiCamillo] write a book together.