I think the reason teenage fiction is so popular with adults is that adults hunger for narrative just as badly as teenagers do.

A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative. That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.

In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that's not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I'm still mostly American, but it's a nice tension.

I don't purposely push the boundaries... I think if you pay attention to a story, it will have exactly as much 'difficult material' as it needs, and nobody will complain about it because you've earnt it.

When I get up, I have a cup of coffee, surf the Internet, then do a half-hour run.

Most people who are on the inside of a technology have no idea what it's like to look at from an end user's point of view. This is why they have focus groups. I'm really familiar with this because I worked 10 years for Hallmark Cards in the U.S.

Potatoes are popped, with no oil, using the same technology used in the rice cake manufacturing business. It took a lot of trial and error and lots of practice, though, to get the right flavor.

Technology allows us to do many things, but it is always important to combine it with traditional handcrafts and, in fact, use technology to replicate dying arts so that they are not lost.