When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights.