A writer should never mark the page with their own tears.
From Richard Flanagan
A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.
We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion.
There is a crisis that is not political - an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness - and we're completely unequal to dealing with it.
I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families.
I was one of six kids; my grandmother lived with us. We had an aunt who used to have nerves, and all her kids would turn up and live with us.
As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.
There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.
The only accusation of Gillian Triggs with the ring of truth is that she has lost the confidence of the government - but then, so too has Tony Abbott.
The idea of some people being less than people is poison to any society and needs to be named as such in order to halt its spread before it turns the soul of a society septic.
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