But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.

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

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.

Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.

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.