What I hope is that the book [Bink & Gollie] delights children. What I hope is that they laugh and laugh and laugh, just as we did when we wrote them.

I hate to cook and love to eat.

At the thought of being eaten by rats, Despereaux forgot about being brave. He forgot about not being a disappointment. He felt himself heading into another faint. But his mother, who had an excellent sense of dramatic timing, beat him to it; she executed a beautiful, flawless swoon, landing right at Despereaux's feet.

You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.

But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.

The image I had was very clear, and so in that way The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane began like other books.

So here I am, sending a two-ounce mouse down into a dungeon with a sewing needle to save a human princess, and I don't know how in the world he's going to do it. I have no idea. That was the first time it occurred to me that writing the story was roughly equivalent to Despereaux's descent into the dungeon. I was tremendously aware of that as I was writing. I thought, "I have to be brave or else I'm not going to be able to tell it." But it's the only way that I can write. If I know what's going to happen, I'm not interested in telling the story.