My first memory is on a ship from California back to Sydney. Water is just a natural place of home and not home.

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

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.

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."

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

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.