If not for My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell, I wouldn’t be a writer . . . mind you, I probably wouldn’t have had five treatments for rabies either. More
Mark Twain’s quote “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read” had a significant influence on me in my early years, which helped me take to reading seriously. More
The first writer that I really fell in love with was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in particular his Sherlock Holmes stories, and the first story that I ever wrote was a Sherlock Holmes story. More
I write out of compulsion. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,” as Alan Sillitoe remarked—the exhilaration and discipline of the run; the finish line unknown until you get there. More