My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people.

Perfection, in anything, is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else Ive ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

I am writing a sequel to The Touch because I want to further explore the Chinese question that I have raised. There will be more about that in a sequel.

I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it's the kind you read with one hand.