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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.

I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.

I think that 'The Outsiders' was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.

I started writing at the age of seventeen because I had a teacher in high school who said that we had to get something accepted by a national magazine to get an A. The teacher later withdrew that threat, but the writing bug bit me.