I thought that that was a really Australian story. And I wasn't mad at Dickens about that at all. I thought that seemed like us, in all sorts of ways.

I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a zoologist, because zoologists seemed like life-loving people.

It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consciousness that you would get in the United Kingdom or even in Australia.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

What I find really attractive is something that's going to be a little dangerous. Something that might get me into trouble; you know, you turn up in London and you've just rewritten Dickens. And, of course, then you think, 'What have I done?'