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.

I probably dreamt about running off to America or something when I was 16 because it just seemed like I was studying algebra and going, 'What am I going to use this for?'

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.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

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.

I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.