I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'

I think of this as a democratizing device.

Just think of it as a very, very long pen.

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.