The origin of each story is unique.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

You are the ever-expanding universe to me

During the night, while Bull and Lucy slept, Edward, with ever-open eyes, stared up at the constellations. He said their names, and then he said the names of the people who loved him. He started with Abilene, and then went on to Nellie and Lawrence and from there to Bull and Lucy, and then he ended again with Abilene: Abilene, Nellie, Lawrence, Bull, Lucy, Abilene. See? Edward told Pellegrina. I am not like the princess. I know about love.

[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."

There's a Buddhist precept that the only thing you deserve is the chance to do the work, and I've been given the chance to do the work.

To me the book is like having a kid. I have to let it go out in the world, and great things will happen. Maybe they won't, but it has to keep on moving.