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.

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.