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I wasn't really comfortable reading until I was 12.

I have kept a reading diary since I was 18. I am jealous of my friend who has kept hers since she was ten.

I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

I didn't read at all until I was 12. I just couldn't. It was too frustrating.

I wrote my first story when I was six or seven.

I started writing when I was about thirteen.

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.

My dad read, I think, the Perry Mason mysteries and Zane Grey and some humor compendiums... And then at one point, the bookmobile started coming to town. That was really cool. I mean, that was when I read my first Raymond Carver story. I think that was probably 1969 or so. I must have been 13.