I need to write, and I can't write when I'm on the road.

Allow me to congratulate you on your very astute powers of observation.

I grew up in Florida, and I wanted to go home and I couldn't. I didn't have the money. The book [The Tiger Rising] was a way to go home.

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

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

In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, "Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter." I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, "Maybe they do...maybe stories matter."

It's a book [Bink & Gollie] about shortness and tallness, so I think it's appropriate to discuss the virtues of shortness.