The origin of each story is unique.

I love words; I love the way they sound. Once I've worked on everything else, the last drafts of my books come down to how they sound.

It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.

[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, "What are you working on now?" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said "It doesn't matter at all now."

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.

No matter how hard you try to be present at home, you're always doing the things that you have to do.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.