The health of our seas determines the future of humanity.

For a while Australians were desperately trying to be cosmopolitan. I think it is a pointless exercise. Australian novels are those rooted in Australia, with Australian landscapes and colours. My work has always had bits of Western Australia in it. It is always here. The world comes to us.

In fiction 'issues' are accidental, sometimes incidental. The place and the people it creates are paramount.

It's sadness coming on like the old days, the vast seamless hopeless weight of sadness looking for a place to rest.

I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study.

We live in specific places. We are marked by a place.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers