The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.

Men never sound more stupid than when they're telling you they're a very complex personality.

When I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.

The secret for an artist is to make that a subject and not bang your head against the wall and give up. But to turn it into and treat the new subject matter, which is one's own vanishing.

First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.

One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.