There must be something to think about at the end.

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.

There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.

He wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic.

People forget your goodness

A woman is at her greatest peril in the presence of a beautiful man.

When I do things without any explanation but just with spontaneity ... I can be sure that I am right.

O Blessed Mary, whoever loves you honors God; whoever serves you pleases God; whoever invokes your holy name with a pure heart will infallibly receive the object of his petition.

So here I am - a 75-year-old man sitting on a bar stool in a blues club, trying to figure out exactly how I got here. Any way you look at it, it's a helluva story.

Publishers are humane men, and rarely commit crimes. Authors, however, are a hardened set, who usually perpertrate a felony every time they issue a book.

In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?'

There's not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves.