I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.
At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas.
I dunno whether it was to do with my parents - we were working-class - but it was important to me to be self-sufficient.
I grew up in a family that was working-class, which taught me to be careful with money.
When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition £200 was the prize.
In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S.
I would have loved to have been a rock n' roll star. But none of us was musical, and none of us had any instruments.
I wrote 'Knots and Crosses,' the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction.
In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.
I'm not Rebus. We're not the same. I don't even think he'd like me if we met. He'd think I was a wishy-washy liberal.
People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.
When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition £200 was the prize.