I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

My name became a brand and I'd love to say it was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.

The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards.

Stephen King told me a long time ago, when he gave me some advice about the movies. He said to take the money up front and expect it to be something different than the book and if you don't like that don't deal with Hollywood. But if you take the money, shut up and don't criticize the film because you sold it. The movie doesn't change a word of the book.

It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.