Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it.

At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times.

Words don't come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment.

I applied for a job on 'Melody Maker' once.

Tennis is interesting because the women are almost more popular than the men. In the U.S. Open, women even get exactly the same money as the men.

My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.

To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.

When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.