31 Quotes by Nick Earls

If you can't have love in your life, you might as well have home-grown basil.

Long pants,’ she said rather too fiercely to Andy when he came out of his room wearing shorts. ‘Long pants.’ She herded him back towards his door. ‘These people are from head office. These people are from Melbourne.’ And she emphasised Melbourne as if that should have been all he needed to know.‘Melbourne people vomit if they see knees,’ I told him, and he said, ‘Why is that kind of information never part of the briefing?

It’s your crap that’s endearing. It’s the basis of any relationship, way beyond even the choice of who wins on to whom. It’s crap that sustains things. The mutual vulnerability that comes from knowing each other’s crap. How shallow would we be if you only felt things for people on account of their successes? How likely would that be to survive?

I want to grow up to be Tom Keneally or David Malouf: still in the game, relevant, putting out quality work, and paying tax aged 78 and 80.

I'm happy to work until I'm 70 if I'm able to. Actually, I'm happy to keep writing as long as people keep buying my books.

One of the most interesting female characters I've written about was Meg Riddoch, the lead character in 'The Thompson Gunner'.

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing.

E-books present the greatest opportunity readers have ever had to find each other. It's a chance for stories written for paper to find new life and a chance for new stories to appear, freed from the constraints of paper publishing.

Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.