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My parents came to visit every two months and brought plenty of books.

I came from a home where everybody had a book.

Books were in my family - books were my family.

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book.

One of the first times that I went into a book store and saw a bunch of my books, my impulse was to put them all under my coat and run away so that no one else could see them, even though, of course, I wanted everyone to see them.

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.

And my father always took me to the library. We were both book addicts.

I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

When I was young, my parents had a library in our living room. I was always free to browse and read.