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I was a reader as a child, believe it or not.

I didn't read at all until I was 12. I just couldn't. It was too frustrating.

I seemed to have been born reading.

I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: 'Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents.'

I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were.

I hadn't been a particularly precocious reader, but everybody else in my family was.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much.

As is said about most writers, on the one hand, all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.