Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

If I am just home and writing, I become very strange.

In my stories for children, I sometimes show a hard, harsh, dangerous world. I'm going to show you the way it is, but I'm going to also tell you that there's every reason to hope.

And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.

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.

Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.

That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.