It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place.

Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective.

I've got life for a subject because as life starts to drain away, you start seeing very clearly what life is, for the first time.