“When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.”

I didn’t read at all until I was 12. I just couldn’t. It was too frustrating.

I would ask my parents something, but then go to my siblings. We were encouraged to bounce ideas off everyone.

I collect things that just look retarded.

I picked books by their covers – the worse the cover, the more I wanted to read it.

I definitely have managed to overcome dyslexia now to become a fully functional human being but things were a lot more difficult when I was younger.

I’ve always wanted to have a book published – it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.

My father would often work all night and sleep during the day, so for us, dinner might be pancakes, and breakfast might be beef stroganoff.

My parents told us how they felt but never imposed their beliefs on us, although I appreciate I got a healthy sense of democracy from them.

At 12 I dropped out of school but I had lost interest in it at a much earlier age. For me, school was very very stressful.

I miss my Dad. My Dad loved cheesy monster movies, so we’d have Godzilla movie marathons. Those are some of my favorite memories, laughing at how the monster outfits were so bad, like black garbage bags for heads.

The way this whole novel thing came together was, I sold them one bill of goods and then didn’t communicate very well. I am like Captain Run-on Sentence.

I had this whole ritual with my mother making the bed with me inside it so I would be invisible.

I think what my father appreciated was the science experiment of life. He had these kids, and they had their own experiences. He wanted us to discover the world for ourselves.

But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition…

When someone tells us something we’re doing wrong on the boards, we try to respond, we try to be responsive to the fan boards, but yeah, I can’t read them.

I find it’s too much for me to read endless critiques, even if we’re being well-defended, of exactly what we’re doing.

With regard to the youth vote we should encourage them to partake in the process, making more use of our education system to show the role Government plays in their lives

You try not to because it’s hard and at times shameful, but then when you read those pages over and you see they have no life to them so you throw them away and force yourself to be more honest.

I can’t imagine turning into one of those codgers who no longer reads fiction. I’m regularly stirred by it and suffer no anxiety of influence. Influence me! That was my credo then, as I was developing and learning, and remains so now, as I’m developing and learning.

This makes his writing very pleasing to read: João Gilberto Noll pays attention to detail, but only to certain details. And it’s never easy to foresee which details will send the narrator or the plot in an unsuspected direction.

I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it