Despite the war, and bombings, and all the big things that happen to us, the stuff of our lives is small and always will be. During a war it is diffe….

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something..

Writers feel that they can't afford to wait. They must do it now, and they are so clever, and there is so much competition. I'm quite happy to wait, ….

You are obviously writing out of experience and so the boundaries are always blurred, it is just that sometimes it would seem that you are playing wi….

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

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….

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

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….

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 ….

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….

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

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

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….

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..

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 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 ….

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….

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'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….