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.

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.

I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.

There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.

There can be a lot of longevity in the repetition of things being told again and again in a variety of ways.

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.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.