I take my ideas from my experiences.

If you don't know where you're going, stop racing to get there. -- from Just Desert by M. T. Anderson

I have lots of ideas. The problem for me has always been which one to do.

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.

Your house is all about routine, not the unexpected events of your life.

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.