One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels.

It is much easier for me to define what makes a novel French or Russian, but defining the characteristics of an Australian novel are difficult for me as it is all too close - I can't see the woods for the trees.

I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans.

You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

I don't write quickly or a lot. Well actually I write quickly, but I don't have a store of things. I will wait for that erotic moment - like the one which struck me when someone said "have you ever heard of Kester Berwick?"

You are obviously writing out of experience and so the boundaries are always blurred, it is just that sometimes it would seem that you are playing with fire a little bit by choosing someone that obviously existed.

Wonder - the sensation of being whisked out of time and space...to be bathed in ... epiphanous delight.