The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.

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

Following my muse has worked out pretty well so far. I can't see any reason to change the formula now.

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head

Certain peer pressures encourage little fingers to learn how to hold a football instead of a crayon. I confess to having yielded to these pressures.

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

An award does not change the quality of a book.