Matt Cooper

So what has stuck with you that's still very much as you age?

What are the things from your childhood in particular which still very much form you and are you?

Yeah.

Just explain to listeners who might not be familiar what that actually means, because you actually, rather than using it as an adjective, you're using it as something that you grew up as, didn't you?

Rather than just being functional.

Did you reject that?

Did you rebel against it?

Because my understanding of puritanical a lot of the time would be almost censorious.

Yeah.

But you show incredible empathy and understanding.

How did you develop empathy and understanding in your writing, having come from that background?

You mentioned that your parents have passed.

Did they read any of your work?

Was it published when they were still alive?

I was just wondering what she would have made of...

your empathy and understanding for other people.

One of the things that I think a lot of people have come to, the characters, Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, they became almost so real that they almost became like friends or inhabitants of people's lives.

Do you base them on people you know?

When you are writing as well, are you writing very much with the story in mind or the characters?

So the stories serve the characters, isn't it?