One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.

The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though.

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.

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.

The extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignificant . What art can do is make the extraordinary more ordinary and ordinary more extraordinary.

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?"

I've always had a fascination for the stage which has to do with transfiguration. One moment you are John Smith from East Brighton riding in your cart, and the next moment you are in a completely different world.