In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it's the kind you read with one hand.

There is no doubt that it is more difficult to read and more difficult to write but I still manage.

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.

I stopped this one about two months before federation and I want the next one to be more political. It will deal with the formation of white Australian policy and things like that.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

There's a hell of a lot of horny people out there who are not being gratified in the way they should be.

My husband says it is very good that I have very tiny feet, because they're easier to get in my mouth.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

It's a woman's book but I think the men will read it too.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice.

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary.

She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's.

I am writing a sequel to The Touch because I want to further explore the Chinese question that I have raised. There will be more about that in a sequel.

How frightening that one person could mean so much so many things.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

Most of the birds of the Old World can be found here, as Oman is on a strategic route for migrating birds.

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.

I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.

I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

In Kenya you've got the great birds and monkeys leaping through the trees overhead. It's a chance to remember what the world is really like.

When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?

Make no mistake about it. These are not 'kookie' birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here attempted to explain.

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.

Feathers predate birds.

The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.

I used to have this little mouse. I buy birds from the pet store and I let them go.

Having done something like The Thorn Birds gives you enormous longevity. You can keep picking and choosing the roles for a bit longer.

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.

Consider the birds. Be wise as serpents.

Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best.

I can find God in nature, in animals, in birds and the environment.

As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.

Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.

Whores don't live in company of poor men, citizens never support a weak company and birds don't build nests on a tree that doesn't bear fruits.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy.

I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?