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The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn't understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.

I think fan fiction is the way most writers start, and the same goes for music and design.

There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

As a novelist, where do you go to tap into memories, and impressions, and sensations? It's usually, in my experience, your early life, before you started thinking of yourself as a writer, because somehow those experiences are unadulterated.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

When I was first approached about doing an autobiography, I said, 'absolutely not.' But when I sat down, memories came pouring out. It wrote very quickly - I think there was an emotional impulse, because once I started in, the story itself carried me along. It was a very intense writing period and took a year and change to finish.