Travel books are by and large boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact fiction and autobiography.

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

I am a big defender of 'Harry Potter ' and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish we should be thankful for them.

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.

The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book ' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.

We're competing with everything: the beach the mall bookstores. Libraries are in a transition right now caught between two forces the old ways and technology. Libraries are under a lot of pressure to provide both.

The reason is that till date in spite of advances in information technology and strategies of information the written word in the form of books still remains one of humanity's most enduring legacies.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.