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I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

I have a huge passion for literature.

I'll think about things for thirty or forty years before I'll write it.

Literature has become my life.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. I've lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe I've lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending.

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.