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

It is not too fantastic to say that he desired them with some of the absolute passion that characterised the exposed and flaming heart of Jesus which hung on Emilie's wall. Since this narrative has tried to avoid the canonisation of the Herr Direktor, the idea of the sensual Oskar as the desirer of souls has to be proved.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

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

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

You know, so I was a weird eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.