I'm not one of those people who writes a biography or tries to figure out what kind of ice cream the character liked when he was 10.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My love for ice cream emerged at an early age - and has never left!
I was a nut for Dostoevsky. You can tell a lot from what people read between those ages. My brother was a Steinbeck freak and now he lives in a little village in New Hampshire and he's a baker.
There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again.
By the time I was 10, I was doing plays for Phoenix theater. My first lead role was as the Stinky Cheese Man. I got a taste of the limelight, and I just couldn't stop. It was a way for me to be the artistic, geeky kid that I was, and not get beat up.
I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old.
I was not an avid comic book reader as a kid.
I was 12. Our, teacher made us write an autobiography and I realised that I wasn't very interesting. I began to make things up, and that's when I thought maybe I was a writer, or at least a fiction writer.
I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you're a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that's pretty cool.
I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.
I have the best memories as a kid eating ice cream. It was a family tradition that I had with my father. It was nice.