I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.

Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn't yet know how to say: 'I'm lonely, in pain, frightened' - distress which then unfairly comes out as an attack on the safest, kindest, most reliable thing in the child's world: the parent.

The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has worked life out and is handing things out to the poor people who might not have life worked out.

There is militaristic-hegemonic-plutocratic side of the U.S. which is getting out of hand and threatens to corrupt the whole republic. I remain a deeply concerned, committed admirer, but also a very worried one.

I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.

I was an incredibly lonely, very alienated teenager.