It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.

Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.

In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, "Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter." I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, "Maybe they do...maybe stories matter."

I journal for about half an hour, and by the time that's done, the business day on the East Coast has begun. The phone starts to ring, and the rest of the day is spent dealing with the business of writing. My workday is done at about 3:00.

I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language.

Holly McGhee said I should come to dinner with them. That first dinner, I said something pretty smart-alecky, and Alison [McGhee] laughed really hard at it. It made me happy.