ISOBELLE CARMODY

All through university years, I used to come up to Melbourne, go to Pizza Napoli with my friends and then to a movie.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.

I do see, in some younger writers, elements and things that I have used - and I am very touched and flattered because I am part of a tapestry that is being absorbed by authors.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the notion of child abandonment, of a mother not being a good mother, that's built into the mother who sends the babes into the woods, and they use the bits of bread or stones to come home again.

I believe excellent fantasy reflects us all, and yes, it can use those myths that underpin societies, our subconscious yearnings and longings, and perhaps our barren spirituality.

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition.

I don't believe in fairies floating around, and I don't believe in telepathy, but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions.

What's gratifying is that it's my books that are being read and reread until they're battered over the years. I love that.

First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time.

I wrote my first full book when I was fourteen, and that was 'Obernewtyn.' It was also the first book I had published. It was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to, and it was short listed for Children's Book of the Year in the older readers category in Australia.

Isn't that what writing is about? The constant attempt to understand the world?

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you.

If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well - and children and young adults won't suffer anything else.

Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life.

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully

Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully.

The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.