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

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.

I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.

Literature has always been a part of my life. I studied history and literature in college. My mother is a novelist; I grew up around books.

When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.

I was learning book-keeping at the age of 12, but it never stopped me from pursuing literature. Over the years, I grew to love the written word.