On writing

But when I’m hungover in the office it feels like every second is being seared into my skin, a line I used many years ago, in a short story about a woman who had suffered a great bereavement.

I write in my journal the list of jobs for the week. Then I read from Mary Oliver’s Poetry Handbook: ‘The most important point in the line is the end of the line. The second most important point is the beginning of it.’I make a note.

Physical rest is emotional, whether you want it to be or not. Slowing down physically means the insides follow sometime after, though they cannot be rushed.

The Daintree blockade had lasted about eight months all up, and here I was into my eighth year of writing about the damn thing.

My skin is white, or rather it is a soft, warm pink, which is the colour of the skin of the most dangerous and successful pillagers in recent times. I descend from them. I am them. Nothing is random. I am capable of killing another person but I would prefer not to. I would prefer not to survive an apocalypse.

Tracker is a blueprint for building an independent Aboriginal-controlled university, one that is tied to land, culture and people.

‘Thirty years ago I wrote to Helen Garner, via her publisher, and asked if I could interview her.’

‘This is not an essay or a book review. This is a love story. I fell in love with writing, and then I stopped. I’m trying to figure out what happened, and whether I can fall in love again’

‘Writing ecocentric fiction is relational. Like ecology, like phenomenology. Like a medicine bundle. Like a carrier bag.’

‘I do commercial translations, literary translation doesn’t pay the bills and requires a lot more work. I translate insurance forms, information leaflets for medication, instructions for prostate operations… It’s a repetitive job and in general very boring. But I think about Kafka, about how his job at an insurance office may have pushed him to immerse himself more fully in his fiction, and that gives me some consolation’ – Fabian Martinez Siccardi.