I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.

Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.

Don't drop him," said Peter's mother to his father. "Don't you dare drop him." She was laughing. "I will not," said his father. "I could not." For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me. Again and again, Peter's father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father's waiting arms. "See?" said his father to his mother. "Do you see how he always comes back to me?

Everything, as you well know . . . cannot always be sweetness and light.

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

One, we [with Alison McGhee] laugh a lot - that was great. Two, I enjoy writing, but it's a lonely undertaking. To have someone in the room with me is an absolute delight and makes it seem less impossible. It became a kind of comforting, joyful process.

All of that loneliness and longing in my heart got transferred into the book Because of Winn-Dixie, I guess.