“I'm always hesitant to describe a book or an author as an 'influence', because I think it ends up being a quiet form of bragging -- very often, writers who talk about their `influences' are just trying to change the pre-existing perception of their own work by connecting themselves to specific books they wish they had written. To be honest, I think most true influences are unconscious and unrelated to literature. So what I did was this: I went through my bookshelves and tried to find books that changed the way I thought about the world, or at least the way I thought about myself. I can't be certain that they actually influenced me, but I like to pretend that they did."