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I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don't like to read.

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books.

I remember all the way back in high school thinking about writing books. And, in fact, I've written a lot of stories. I've got dozens of stories I've written that no one's ever seen.

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.

If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.

I've known since I was 12 that I wanted to write. My father was a teacher, and there were so many books around, it seemed natural to pick them up.

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.

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