But the fact is I'm not work-identified. I'm not a lawyer or a writer. I'm a mom and I'm a woman and that's the kind of people I want to see in books in the starring role.

I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor so I come from a very academic background. I love writing you know?

My mom was dying for me to write a book she was my biggest advocate.

I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers.

I like to write and draw and paint and my mom's an artist so I think I get caught up in thinking 'I'm afraid it's gonna be bad ' and it's hard for me to start sometimes.

I don't practice but I am still officially in paediatrics. I keep in touch with journals and I have a very good data bank of medical information and there is a key thing for a writer knowing where to go. I know where to go to get the information that I need.

I lost my second marriage because of drinking and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

If I felt in the event of a royal wedding inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't I'd ignore it.

My parents had an arranged marriage as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it and I will continue to write about it.

For me it's also - the music is equally as important. I mean I think as somebody who writes music there just has to sort of be the marriage between both.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love you'll never make it.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love something to live for.

I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.

I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life.

Life's like a movie write your own ending. Keep believing keep pretending.

You must understand the whole of life not just one little part of it. That is why you must read that is why you must look at the skies that is why you must sing and dance and write poems and suffer and understand for all that is life.

Truly I never thought of myself as writing legal thrillers and I still don't think I do. I write stories about women.

I do have two data identities. I have my name Bruce Sterling which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.

Even in the beginning when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song as one songwriter to another I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

You know my first three or four drafts you can see are on legal pads in long hand. And then I go to a typewriter and I know everybody's switching to a computer. And I'm sort of laughed at.

I mean in some cases with libel laws you know they can write things about people who have no course of action because they can't afford to take legal action against them.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.