On the return flight from my mother in Florida , I sat next to a businessman who asked me what I did for a living. I said, "I write," and it seemed totally ridiculous in the face of what had just happened. I mean, I couldn't think of anything more pointless than telling stories. He asked, "What do you write?" I said, "I write children books."

A friend of mine said Winn-Dixie is the way that people want the world to be and Tiger Rising is the way that it is.

Everything when I was a kid was illustrated.

So many miracles have not yet happened.

Don't drop him," said Peter's mother to his father. "Don't you dare drop him." She was laughing. "I will not," said his father. "I could not." For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me. Again and again, Peter's father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father's waiting arms. "See?" said his father to his mother. "Do you see how he always comes back to me?

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

Reading is my passion.