My father was a great educator for me. He taught me so many things. He named me Carlos after a brother he lost — a very brilliant young man who died at 21 in Mexico. He had written very good poems. He was an intellectual. I think my father wanted to see his brother in me, so he put books into my hands at a very early age. He fostered my literary and artistic inclinations. So he was my best teacher.

I think the first real big influence was Colin Harvey [former Everton coach], I went and played for the U19s for Colin when I was 14, and that's really when the tactical part of the game came in.

It would have to be that one lady teacher in grade school. All six grades, one room, 25 students. She was about nine feet tall as I recall and a very tough disciplinarian. Always had the ruler ready to whack the knuckles if somebody got out of hand. She ran a very well-disciplined group. I think most of the youngsters responded to that. There were one or two that couldn’t handle it and obviously they dropped by the wayside. But that still sticks out in my mind.

Oh, yes, I had teachers at Wheaton. A community high school history teacher named Elizabeth Duncan who taught American history and was a great teacher. Very forceful, very insistent that we write essays to answer questions, and not short answers. Somebody who through force of personality made history interesting and important.

Roland Barthes' 'Camera Lucida'.

The architect Peter Zumthor, for the baths at Vals in Switzerland.

I’m prone to overexplaining things –- when my own understanding of them is shaky. The better I know something, the shorter my prose.

At 12, I wanted to be an architect, at 18, a writer, and now, at forty, an architect again. I’m powerfully drawn to everything related to building, but I also love ideas. These are my two passions.

Be ambitious beyond merely dreaming of the first book being published. Already now try to imagine where you want this to go, where you want to be at 60.

Fear, anxiety, longing, love, art, beauty.