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I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.

I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.

I'm a family-based person, even though we didn't exactly have a very happy family. I was never in any doubt that this was a centre of writing.

I come from a very small city in a rather remote part of America, where writers simply weren't part of the daily fabric.

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

I was always meant to be a writer. I've felt that way since I was a child.