The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

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

There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

I actually do like traveling.

I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.

There ain't no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.