It would be a terrible world if everyone was an artist. Nothing would get done!

In my life, I've lived in very different kinds of places - very tiny rooms when I was young. And you do learn to cope with it. The funny thing is, as you begin to inhabit larger places, it's very interesting how quickly you adapt to your space. What seems enormous at first becomes natural after a few weeks.

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.

My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I want them to be free to discover it in their own good time. I think reading an intimate memoir by your father - or an intimate autobiographical work, whatever we want to call this thing - you have to come at it at the right moment, so I'm certainly not foisting it upon them.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Writing is, after all, a gesture towards other people, giving something to others. And so it's not a completely hermetic exercise. It's really an opening up.

The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.