A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I’m older than they are, much older. I feel ancient.

I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.