The way we started was, Alison [McGhee] said, 'Tall girl, short girl.' We had no plans beyond that.

The themes in my books, like in life, are about grace and redemption and you never know when they're going to show up and what form they're going to be in. Stories emerge from keeping your heart open to the people that cross in front of you or the dogs or the mice, and their ability to open you up and enrich your life.

Nothing new ever happens in the books. It's the same old theme.

I don't know what Alison [McGhee] thinks, but I very strongly doubt that we will ever see the parents of Bink or Gollie. However, I do think it would be fun to make Tony Fucile draw portraits of the parental units and have those portraits sitting on Bink's mantel or in Gollie's kitchen. Glowering. A little.

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 was visiting my mother in Florida when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened. I was working on The Tale of Despereaux at that point. I had already gone into writing it with a great deal of trepidation and fear, and then this God-awful thing happens and it was really hard to even get back home to Minneapolis.

That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.