At 16, I started reading trashy stuff, anything slightly naughty and risque.

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming.

I started reading the Bible. All of a sudden the words jumped off the page and became real.