Personal finances are like people’s personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

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.

And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know.

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

But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.

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

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