I think that a lot of people do have a physical Ithaca, but I don't think that I do and I think that a lot of people do not. This depends on your val….

One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and t….

The extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignifican….

I think that in this globalised world, the local is going to become more and more important - it is a paradox. You see it in Western Europe more and ….

I don't write quickly or a lot. Well actually I write quickly, but I don't have a store of things. I will wait for that erotic moment - like the one ….

In the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that….

Those are the two things: a sense of loving and being loved, and being creative - that is what life is made up of, and what literature reminds us of..

It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before..

Wonder - the sensation of being whisked out of time and space...to be bathed in ... epiphanous delight..

There is a mental space that we consciously makes our way back to, and give honour to what has formed us in this mental homeland which we carry with ….

I did spend about 5 years in the Griffin Theatre Company in 1978 actually , and worked therefore about 5 years on a voluntary basis. This was very mu….

Every time you watch a performance in the theatre, you know that this is just for you, and will never be the same again. It is quite exciting for me..

I've always had a fascination for the stage which has to do with transfiguration. One moment you are John Smith from East Brighton riding in your car….

The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though..

It is much easier for me to define what makes a novel French or Russian, but defining the characteristics of an Australian novel are difficult for me….

When I re-read the Odyssey, it felt like I was reading PD James or Minette Walters - you feel that you are sharing in something that hundreds of mill….

I am coming from an older school, and I feel that you must learn to wait. There is that essay which was about the great notion of sitting on the moun….

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at leas….

I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans..

I want to write the sort the book that my people want to read, even if the market is small..

A form of art that I like is portraiture. I've been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobio….