The Tiger Rising is, again, about a motherless child. His name is Rob Horton. He is dealing with the death of his mother, when he and his father move to a new town. And two things happen the same day that Rob gets sent home. One is he meets a girl named Sistine Bailey, who is what my mother would call "a piece of work," and he finds a real tiger in a cage in the woods behind the motel where he lives with his dad. And that's the story: what happens with the Sistine tiger, the real tiger and Rob's grief.

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.

As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.

You don't realize what you're going to get, and you can't prepare yourself for it.

Mercy Watson was a character that had been in my head for a long time.

I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.

All of that loneliness and longing in my heart got transferred into the book Because of Winn-Dixie, I guess.