I'm very interested in the way the Internet has changed teenage life. Obviously it's very different from when I grew up, when there weren't even answering machines, much less computers. I was telling my children this the other day, and the little one said, "Did you have electricity, Mom?" and I was like okay, enough, kid.

Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.

It's finished. Everything went past, without me.

I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am.

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.