Helen Garner

It's disturbing at my age to look at a young woman's destructive behaviour and hear the echoes of it, of one's own destructiveness in youth.

Janet Malcolm's probably the writer I most admire and who's most influenced me.

Courts are supposed to be places of reason. But this, of course, is a fantasy. I mean, there is reason being used as a technique. But courts, in fact, are baths of emotions.

Technology teaches passivity. Absorbed in our devices - at any age - we are absorbed in someone else's perspective.

When the writers themselves are a bit out of control, and their lives are collapsing around them, they seem to rejoice in misery and celebrate the wrong sort of things.

Writing's like gambling. Unpredictable and sporadic successes make you more addicted, not less.