When you're waiting for a bus, the thing to do is smoke a cigarette.

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.

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."

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.

When you get immersed in whatever you're writing, the world does suddenly get so filtered through what you're writing. And then of course what you're writing then filters the world right back.

I sometimes think that we expect too much resolution in this world.

You have to want something or you're finished.