Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.

There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes.

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.

With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.

The paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.