I don't believe there's anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help.

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.

And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

I've been a writer and a parent since adolescence, it feels like, and I'm still making both gigs up as I go along. I did both in different forms of isolation - too young by conventional standards, too far off-grid culturally and geographically. So my experience is probably too specific to be useful. None of us do this stuff the same way. We just try to endure and press on, I guess.

The notion that love is abroad in the world has shaped my life.

It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

For every moment the sea is peace and relief, there is another when it shivers and stirs to become chaos. It's just as ready to claim as it is to offer.