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As a writer, you need a strong sense of self-belief. And when it comes to writing, I've always had that.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

I was an only child who was never really good at anything else. I had no other option. I could write; I wanted to write; I wrote. Otherwise, I was unemployable.

I think by definition you need to have lived a little bit to write anything that's humanly true.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

If I think about the writers I love or might be influenced by, I can't write at all, so I pretend there aren't any.

I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

I never believed I could write anything. No way - write a whole story? Figuring out all that plotting and symbolism? How do you foreshadow things?