You have to want something or you're finished.

In order to have a real life of any romance, there has to be a level of fantasy.

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've always wanted to figure out how to do a walking story. I'd never figured out how to do one and have it work or be interesting or have anything that it's about.

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.

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.