The funny thing is, when I've gone through the relentless editing process, my editor and I are amazed the Mercy Watson books still make us laugh. The same jokes that made us laugh the first time around still make us laugh in the 16th rendition.

You are down there alone, the stars seemed to say to him. And we are up here, in our constellations, together.

[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."

I actually do like traveling.

I read whatever the publisher sends me.

But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.

There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.