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I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum.

As a writer, I'm convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvelous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone.

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring.

I loved to read and would read anything that roused my interest, whether it was below my age level or above it, even if I could barely make sense of it.

I've always been drawn to writing for young readers. The books that I read growing up remain in my mind very strongly.

I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.

My twenties were entirely taken up with literature. Entirely.

I read a great deal of science fiction with consummate pleasure between, say, the ages of 12 and 16. Then I got away from it. In my mid- to late 20s, I started trying to write it.