My favorite food is deep-fried ravioli. I always get that every year.

There ain't no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.

There can be a lot of longevity in the repetition of things being told again and again in a variety of ways.

Reading a story should be a fabulous, wonderful thing. The most important thing that parents can do for kids is to read with them and to let their kids see them reading books for their own pleasure.

I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane began with a friend giving me a rabbit doll - forgive me, Edward, for using that word; he doesn't like "doll" - for Christmas. I said, "Oh, he's lovely, what's his name?" And she said, "Edward." And a few days after I received the rabbit, who was dressed very handsomely in Edwardian kind of clothes, I saw him stripped of his finery and face down on the bottom of the ocean floor. Why? I don't know. But that's where his story began in my head.

Going out and not only meeting the kids, but meeting the teachers and the librarians and seeing the world, fills me up.