I started to take a keen interest in food when I was 16 years old. When I was a young teenager my mother always encouraged my brother, my sister and I to get involved in the kitchen - stirring and smelling things so we would understand how things were made.

There was a band very early on in our class, and I played in that band and as a teenager, I continued. It was more from my own relationship with the instruments at this time, figuring out the instrument and then having to learn different pieces that I really got into music. I really discovered the almost transcending power of music. And I think that is why I am so into it.

It's cold water in the face to realize you're not nearly as special and as unusual as you might have thought when you were an alienated teenager.

When I talk to people who have teenagers now, their rooms are filled with screens. There are their phones and their DVD players and TVs and all these things to produce distractions for them, and I think it would be hard to find the time to create something. I think that's really changing something about adolescence.

I think it's harder for each generation. Even I just feel completely separate from teenagers today who have access to the Internet. And I'm amazed that this interest in video games has never gone away. It just keeps growing.

When I was a teenager I decided I was going to be a writer and that nothing was going to stop me. It sounds almost villainous. But I knew that was what I wanted.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

As a teenager especially, I just wanted to do my thing and not be noticed.

Teenagers are like atoms when they're moving at hundreds of miles an hour and bouncing off each other. Everybody's got such a crazy hormonal drive and reacting to each other differently and getting upset over little things. High school puts all these potential explosions in one place.

As a teenager, my struggle was how do I balance being empathetic and compassionate towards my peers, while also living my life for myself and not basing my decisions on those around me, and really living a life where I receive my happiness from my own experiences rather than from people pleasing.