I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine.

I don't believe in an interventionist God

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.

The older I get, the more I feel those kinds of ghosts - especially the women in my life - moving out of the shadows a bit more and becoming more present in my life.

Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it