Every time you watch a performance in the theatre, you know that this is just for you, and will never be the same again. It is quite exciting for me.

It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before.

In the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that what you are seeing is repeatable.

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.

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 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.