I know perfectly well that you can't not want anything and live.

Like a lot of writers, I just got sick to death of conventional fiction. I absolutely couldn't stand the illusion of reality and plot. I just couldn't stomach it.

You can sometimes find something good on the other side of doing something very, very painful.

Sometimes there isn't a way to hug and make everything better.

That was one of the problems with the Narcissus figure. Here is a face looking at a face, and the problem is the image of the thing is never actually the thing. You try and grab it and it's not there. It's water. It disappears.

I suppose you retire from trying. If you retire from trying, you think, "Maybe love will just come my way if I don't want it anymore."

I was born in Australia and grew up in the foreign services. I had this kind of trans-Pacific life. I think I was always sort of oriented towards here's Australia and here's America and here's the Pacific.