Love is ridiculous. But love is also wonderful. And powerful. And Despereaux's love for the Princess Pea would prove, in time, to be all of these things: powerful, wonderful, and ridiculous.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.

We were 15 minutes into it and nothing was happening; I thought, well, that's not going to work. Then all of a sudden everything clicked. I don't know how long it took us, but I would just show up at Alison's [McGhee] office. She would type and we'd just kick it back and forth. Writing is so scary for me, such a lonely endeavor, and it became a wonderful thing to show up and have somebody else go through it with me. It was actually a wonderful experience.

If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.

I think for everybody reading can be a solace, illumination, education.

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.

I always wanted to be a character, when I worked at Disney, but I wasn't short enough for certain characters and I wasn't tall enough for others. I wanted to be a chipmunk; I think 4'10" was the cutoff.