The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do aided by modern technology which enables me having long since moved beyond longhand to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

My first job after college was at Magic Quest an educational software startup company where I was responsible for writing the content. I found that job somewhat accidentally but after working there a few weeks and loving my job I decided to pursue a career in technology.

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

The typewriting machine when played with expression is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

Writing I'm convinced should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher ' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal because if you lose it then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel I try and fill up notepads.

I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

As a teacher at Princeton I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel in one sense is a problem-solving exercise.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves by relating that we observe by affirming that we examine by showing that we look by writing that we think by pumping that we draw water into the well.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters seeing the world through their eyes.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

The writing of a melody is an emotional moment success doesn't make it easy.

My overnight success was really 15 years in the making. I'd been writing songs since I was 6 and playing in bands and performing since I was 14.

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

But my strength was in singing and songwriting which was a new discovery for me when I was 18. And I decided if I pursued songwriting which is what was closest to my heart then there would be no competition. I would just live my life being myself and living my dream.

There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility.

While writing my first 90 books I was magazine editor publisher book publisher executive etc. so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

I'm not good at anything except writing jokes. I wasn't good at sports I wasn't good at anything artsy ever. I think there was a real worry for a while about what I would be good at. I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd.

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing it's not usually a comedy and writing thing.

The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story whether in print orating writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.