Following my muse has worked out pretty well so far. I can't see any reason to change the formula now.

The Polar Express began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head

its not bad to be different. Sometimes it's the mark of being very very talented.

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.

The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.

I pore over every word on the cereal box at breakfast, often more than once. You can ask me anything about shredded wheat.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

Certain peer pressures encourage little fingers to learn how to hold a football instead of a crayon. I confess to having yielded to these pressures.

An award does not change the quality of a book.

Happiness is a great contentment.

Just been poisoned by my gran. Nothing says Christmas better than familicide and anaphylactic shock.

There is so much want. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want, pooled in the shape of a girl named Cassia.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

When God places a burden upon you, He places His arms underneath you.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

You can't lie to your soul.

In politics almost all of us are nerds, so that's just a given... but we're cool nerds.

We have to understand where we have strategic relationships that require us to take a different approach. I guess the easiest way to describe it is: different strokes for different folks.

I don't want there to always be this stigma of the "female" artist. "Oh, what does it feel like to be a female doing something?" That hurts me.