Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.

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

There are so many difficult things and stories can make them palatable. That's the way I have always felt.

There ain't a body, be it mouse or man, that ain't made better by a little soup.

I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.

Mercy Watson is obsessed with toast. What was blocking me was the challenge of trying to understand what she loves, what motivates her. That was the missing piece. Toast became the physical symbol of Mercy's hopefully endearing greed and obsession. Without that element in place, it didn't make sense.

You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.