If you don't know where you're going, stop racing to get there. -- from Just Desert by M. T. Anderson

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

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

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.

Hello. It is Monday. I live in Sun City. Sun City is a city that is entirely contained inside an enormous concrete building in the shape of a sun. Its rays house our living quarters

Once we meet our children, even for moments, in a place of "I don't know," of relinquished authority, we return to the realms of mystery and magic, where real connection becomes alive again.

Never rank, rate, or compare coaches, children, concerts, or championships or congratulations. Just enjoy them all.

It means a lot when people understand what I'm going for.

I have trouble with direction, because I have trouble with authority. I was not a good Marine.

The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.

The attempt to suppress an idea has always and everywhere proved a failure.

You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that.

If the family goes, so goes our civilization.

It is important to see that, in the critique of ideology, only those interventions will work which make sense to the mystified subject itself.