Well, I thought the Sex Pistols were the cream of the crop. They came in and topped everybody, for sure. They took all the existing strands and made a perfect package out of them.

You realize there are certain things that you'll never do that you always thought would be part of your future. It's a big relief to discover what you are best suited for, and it's a real advantage to be able then to focus.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

You're always thinking, "What does that add up to?" You can't really get a handle on it. I was curious. I felt like it would be an interesting challenge for me to write down what I'd seen and done and learned - all the convolutions captured in one item that I could look at and get some grip on what the hell happened.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.

I've come to think of myself as a writer of books.