Love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath.

I think empathy's a terrible danger for a writer.

It's a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.

The fallacy is that you have to hold some sort of stake in the grief or horror in order to write about it - I think the opposite is true.

The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made no longer of lies but truth, built not of rich men's hate but our love for our island and for each other.

The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

Literary prizes serve a purpose if they allow for discussion of books.