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In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.

I had just been in some repressive situations - the black middle-class college scene and the crazy United States Air Force - and so I just felt like getting out of that. I thought, now, that I wanted to be a writer. I had something that I wanted to do, that I was interested in doing, so I wanted to pursue that.

I don't think I knew I would be a writer. I wanted to become a writer, and I tried to write.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.

As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.

I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.