To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.

Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.

If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.

Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.

Because I worked as a newspaper reporter for about 14 years before attempting my first novel, I learned to write under almost any circumstances- by candle light, in longhand, in African villages where there was no power, under shelling in Kurdistan.

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.