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I've been doing old-people things since I was a child.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

I was about 12 when I first encountered 'The Moonstone' - or a Classics Illustrated version of it - digging through an old trunk in my grandfather's house on a rainy Bengali afternoon.

I come from a tiny mining town in the rainforest in an island at the end of the world. My grandparents were illiterate.

I lived in town until I was eight and then I moved nearer the farmland, so I had a mixture.

I used to get on a stove wood pile at 5-6 years old and I would have a piece of stove wood and kindling bark as a pick, and I was a star.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

I pulled cotton at 6 years old and worked on the peanut farm and paper route.

I've been collecting rocks since I was 8 and have over 200 different specimens.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink - boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.