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Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile.

Travel teaches as much as books.

There's a lot of young authors out there, and people do seem to forget: in order to write well, you do need to have some experience.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

I'm a lot less travelled as an adult than I was as a child, but I think living in far flung places gives you a perspective on the world and people that adds flavour to your writing.

Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country.

To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

For a writer, its very attractive to stay in one world for a time.