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.\"

I\'m predisposed to think that as a people, we\'re hardwired to understand things through the telling of stories. I think that as human beings it\'s part of who we are.

[A businessmen in plane after 9\\11] asked me, \"What are you working on now?\" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I\'m trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said \"It doesn\'t matter at all now.\"

Mercy Watson is obsessed with toast. What was blocking me was the challenge of trying to understand what she loves, what motivates her. That was the missing piece. Toast became the physical symbol of Mercy\'s hopefully endearing greed and obsession. Without that element in place, it didn\'t make sense.