I think people are smart enough to sort it out. They know when they're watching one of these food fight shows where journalists sit around and yell and scream at each other versus serious issue reporting.

No journalist has ever been in my house and no photographs have ever been taken of where I live. I don't parade my family out for display which is the way it will stay.

I am sensitive to the value of faith and religion and spirituality in people's lives because I'm a journalist.

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.

Ideology politics and journalism which luxuriate in failure are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

Well my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web and should do what they can do better which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education medicine and law in journalism literature and art.

Screenplays I didn't really care about journalism travel books getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I published in 1978 a report on dreams in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. It was the first study of its kind to demonstrate that it is possible for people to make constructive use of their dreams to improve their lives.

After the writer's death reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

From time to time I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died when I went through a divorce and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

I have to remind my dad 'Journalists - no matter how many cigars they smoke with you - are not your friends so don't talk to them.'

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.