Though, as he was torn into a pink upper air, she was a good craft to ride in, for her belly was firm and her breasts enabled a flying man good hold and emotions of heady safety. . . . Steering her peasant tits he bounded off stars.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.

I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.

In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

Coitus is random, children are definite.

It's only when you abandon your ambitions that they become possible.