I wrote because I needed to and wanted to. It never occurred to me that I'd become famous.

In my particular instance I came from a family that didn't have anything. Everything I earned in life I made. Myself. With songs that I wrote.

I was very very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith but I question it.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180 000 words - but it died a death a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

Once I had all the facts in I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager I didn't have any skills for writing as such so it came out in 1500 words.

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is it makes the series limited you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.

I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.

When the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989 I was angry. I even wrote on the back of my car Boycott Exxon!

Of course I'm older now. I'm in a different place in my life than when I wrote the songs for 'Car Wheels' or 'Essence' or whatever. Different things were going on.

My second play The Birthday Party I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down wrote this song and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.

I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year but I used the wrong paper. See the paper I used said 'Happy Birthday' on it. I didn't want to waste it so I just wrote 'Jesus' on it.

As I wrote I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older soft-spoken and she started showing some attitude.

Since I wrote to you last we have got our chapel beautifully lighted with gas and have had our anniversary.

What influenced me was Tori Amos who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me and very inspiring before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'

George wrote Taxman and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.

Well just meeting J. K. Rowling was amazing because she created all this world. And all the fans we all get so obsessed with it and then you met the one person who made it all up. It was just so amazing. And I was just so amazed that that she wrote this book and all of the films have happened.

I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday let alone 10 years ago.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel Mississippi.

I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.