I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?
The childhood games ended for me when I was 14 and I finished school. I had to find a job, not an easy thing in those days.
My mother used to read me from Bank Street schools, that book, you know, Bank Street school had these early reader books. And my mother would read to my brother and I and we had all those advantages that everyone says you need to be successful in school and I was successful in school.
I was a huge bookworm, total nerd, so I was a victim in middle school. I was in three academic clubs, so I was an easy target.
My husband and I like cities. We like to go to other cities. Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, London. We're not big beach people. We're the type that get those books out and go to every museum. We are those people.
I was a bookworm. Every week I'd go to the library and get seven books. Remember libraries? I wonder if people still go. And I learned about everything from the library. I came from a Scottish family. Old school.
I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.
The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.
I think one day I can make a book about coffee shops in Hong Kong. I spent almost most of my time in coffee shops, in different coffee shops.
I was really lucky. I had a really great opportunity. I went to an all girls, very small private school from seventh grade all the way to graduating. It was so wonderful because the focus was school at school...and during the week I could be that nerdy bookworm of a girl, and do six hours of homework at night.
In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.
I tend to write in coffee shops and restaurants with friends of mine because if I'm at home, I get distracted by the television or the cats or my husband, or... you know - all of those things that make it easy to procrastinate.
Both of my parents had me reading at a really young age. Maybe it was a hereditary thing, but my mom always had my nose in a book. I've always been a bookworm.
Boys used to call me Soda in school days. Soda means 'serving officers daughters association.' I miss those days when I had a very protected life: one could get close and bond with other army people that they gradually would become your extended family.
A book has to be easy to open and you don't have to be a bodybuilder to lift it. I like books I can read in bed. Those big tombstones would kill me.
The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den.