I'm not good at chatting right away. Women have to be very patient with me, I suppose.

In the present time you don't really establish what you're going through, but after time it's declared something. Right now there could be some writers doing something expressing their thoughts in a whole different style that we're not aware of. This could be the 'in-between the notes generation.

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

You look at what interests a person and then you formulate what their opinions are, in terms of how they see the world, and how they see love and life.

I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the schoolbus for two hours. But to drive through America and see the backroads, from Nashville to Memphis, Lovick to New Mexico, was incredible. It was probably the greatest trip of my life.

I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so much, and I romanticised so much about the '40s and '50s.

It's funny that I got to do 'On the Road' because the thing that had the biggest impact on me growing up was reading books. I was very inspired by the book and this spirit of Dean Moriarty and how envious we all are of somebody who can be that carefree.