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The trouble with being a ghostwriter or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without credit. If one wants the credit, one has to cease being a ghost and become a leader or innovator.

I think I'm a writer, and it's my job. People in other professions are expected to do their jobs all the time. Why shouldn't I?

With me, I probably work a lot more than people assume I do, but people don't realize how much work goes into writing and producing and making a movie.

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

It's the writers' job to make it positive. It's my job to make it real.

On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's part of what it takes to get the job done. Deeper down, we know it's all on loan.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

I have no ghost writers. I personally write every message and every piece of published mail.

If I weren't a writer, I think I might have thrown myself more enthusiastically into advertising. But, it's difficult to imagine being a diligent copywriter. It would be quite exasperating for me.

The people who knew me and knew my work and trusted me, they knew then as they do now that I've never fabricated or plagiarized a story. People who know me know I didn't do this.