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I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good.

I could not bear to think that I wrote a five-hundred page novel just because I needed to love my father.

It was hard for my father to read; it took him a long time, but he had tremendous retention and tremendous appreciation for writing.

My father is my biggest literary influence. Recently, I've been looking through his letters. He was in the National Guard when I was a child, and whenever he left, he would write to me. He wrote letters to me all through college, and we still correspond. His letters, and my mother's, are one of my life's treasures.

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic.

My dad is a writer, and to see him always in front of a typewriter gave me the inspiration to write. He was my idol, my hero. I wanted to be just like him.

My father always told me I should be a writer, and I found I loved writing my autobiography; writing is such an interesting process.

My dad's passion was to teach adults to read so they could read to their kids.