Alison [McGhee] and I have known each other since the summer of 2001. One evening we were sitting around talking about how we wished we had a good story to work on. Alison said: Why don't we work on a story together? I said: A story about what? And Alison said: A story about a short girl and a tall girl.

I'm predisposed to think that as a people, we're hardwired to understand things through the telling of stories. I think that as human beings it's part of who we are.

Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.

There are so many difficult things and stories can make them palatable. That's the way I have always felt.

My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.

What's my weirdest adventure? Yikes, there've been so very many. Perhaps the pig+vegetable+Taiwanese-army-guys boat ride to the island off the coast of Taiwan qualifies as the weirdest. Or at least the most seasick.

Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.