M. J. Hyland

Where writers are from is one of the world' s most boring topics. Where we're born, gender or race, wealth or poverty - those are the things we spend time talking about. Stop trying to label me. I'm a writer. Worry about whether I'm any good!

I was the first and only person in my family to go to university, and I spent two decades redesigning myself: even my voice is the product of elocution lessons.

I've just finished reading 'The Second Plane,' and I think it's some of the best non-fiction I've ever read.

From the age of eighteen to twenty-one, I worked any job I could get my hands on. One of these jobs was selling fake paintings door-to-door.

Life is ruthless, and its bestowal of fortune arbitrary and capricious. I'd been born to morons, and mine was a shabby life.

I get into all sorts of trouble with my publicists and with newspapers because I won't do photographs.

I have been obscenely lucky. I've got most of the things I've asked for and done well at the things I've wanted to succeed at.

I've never experienced writer's block. When it's going really well, my body temperature goes up, and I'm flushed. I get quite delirious.

Law gave me some structure... all these rules and internal disciplines.

I might live in Manhattan or Edinburgh or Cardiff. I think of myself as without nationality.

As is the case for many people with multiple sclerosis, the effects of weakened limbs, spasticity and fatigue had cut my working life in half. Yet not a single GP, neurologist or nurse, and none of the MS websites, had mentioned the use of neuroenhancers for the treatment of neurological fatigue.

I grew up in a bookless house with a father and brother who have spent most of their lives in prison, psychiatric hospitals, or living rough, and a mother who has spent her life slaving and scrimping to pay the bills, living a nervous and troubled life.

Before MS moved in on me, I'd worked for seven years as a city lawyer, as the editor of a literary magazine, and before the age of 20, I'd also worked as a cadet journalist and as an assistant director in both film and TV. And then, after the lesions of MS, both on my spine and in my brain, I was the opposite of bionic.