Colleen McCullough Quotes

I will never use swear words unless they`re necessary and unless I feel that is what the character would have said in those circumstances.

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.

Forty-four years is about as close to modern life as I want to go because I know now, from where I am, what was important about 1960 in social terms.

I have an editor in my head, that`s why I can`t read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

They should all have their own speech patterns with their own tics and little foibles. It`s fun working all that out ahead of time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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