Quote

I'm completely English, but I grew up in Paris and went to school here. My parents moved when I was five.

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.

I grew up middle class - my dad was a high school teacher; there were five kids in our family. We all shared a nine-hundred-square-foot home with one bathroom. That was exciting. And my wife is Irish Catholic and also very, very barely middle class.

I am hard-core middle class.

When I was six or seven, we went to the nearest English primary school, St Weonards, about seven miles away. The teaching was good, and this was the start of my beginning to shine as a student.

I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education.

When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.

'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend.