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I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

My mother says that after I first visited the home of the man I later married, she knew it was serious when I told her, 'Mum, he has more books than me!' So, books are at the very heart of my life.

My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf.

My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page.

My mother was a very wise and strong person.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me, read with me, read with me. It was wonderful.