Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.

My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Sometimes even when the book is over I dont know whos good and whos bad. Its really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.