When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .

It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.