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I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.

I was a prodigy who learned how difficult writing was only after getting published. I paid my dues later.

Writing nonfiction of various kinds has been instructive and entertaining as well as paying the rent.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.

I didn't think anything I wrote was going to get published. I'm a dyslexic kid who had tutors through college. But I had a very strong impulse to write.

I've never written a book before.

I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.

This book was company for me - I wrote these things when I was in hotels, far from where I normally live. I never intended to publish it.

The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.