You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness – a condition you are stuck with.

A form of art that I like is portraiture. I’ve been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobiography, and so that will be my next thing.

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

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 values and the circumstances of your life. My Ithaca is in the Mental realm and this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to go back to it.

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.

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 with fire a little bit by choosing someone that obviously existed.

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.

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 as it is all too close – I can’t see the woods for the trees.

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 which struck me when someone said “have you ever heard of Kester Berwick?”

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 cart, and the next moment you are in a completely different world.