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The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

I think stories can grow out of the visual. It can be an engine for literacy.

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time.

Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.

There are so many stories to be told, by so many good writers.

The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.

I got interested in the question of literacy because writers are always moaning about why more people don't read books.

Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.

Sometimes, a writer's life alone can tell a story.