The state of love is this constant flux back and forth between who's saving and who's rescuing, who's wanting and not wanting, who's needing and who isn't. It's always going back and forth between two people who are actually attached.

I do some messing around with things, not necessarily about me but about place and people and the things around.

There's a quote that I learned in college a million years ago. "Happy, thought I, is the man who can, in one and the same embrace, hold both his love and the object of his love." Holding the feeling that you have and all the images that you've got and all the fantasies and romantic associations while also holding the actual core person that's been saddled with all of this.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

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 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.