I'm alone and outgunned, scared and inexperienced, but I'm right.

I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction, you're going to get bashed by critics.

Live your life the way you want. You'll figure it out.

There are few writers who, if they publish anything, I am going to buy it: Ian McEwan, Scott Turow, Pat Conroy - he was a buddy of mine and I always read his stuff. Also: Harlan Coben, Elmore Leonard, John Le Carre, but he's pushing ninety.

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.

I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally.

And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!