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I've realised in recent years that without my writing I don't quite feel like a whole person. It brings me joy – I constantly feel grateful that I'm able to work at something that is joyous – but it also allows me to make sense of the world, so much so that I actually think I would be lost without it.

Australian scholars – at least in my field of history – are very good at reflecting on intellectual traditions. It helps one feel part of a long-term conversation that goes beyond individual reputations or achievements.

I feel for reviewers – they can't win. If they review seriously, with gravitas and responsibility, it's difficult to find enough readers. If they shake things up with a bit of drama, they're sledged for being gimmicky. If they say nice things about someone they know (and in Australia everyone is someone you know), they're dismissed as sucks. If they deliver difficult judgements, they're attacked by the thin-skinned. All the while, spaces for intelligent engagement are shrinking.

Writing is the best excuse I've found to play music all day. And to understand my country.

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall when Ta-Nehisi Coates has dinner with James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe – and, as long as I'm out of range, up on the ceiling when Rudyard Kipling joins them.

I have a recurring dream about discovering an enticing space in my own home – a basement or garden – always just out of reach. Its residue is an elated sense of creative possibility. I like the sign the symbolist poet Saint-Pol-Roux put on his door before sleep: Poet at work.

I admire everyone who puts their heart and soul into creating something beautiful with words. But in no particular order, a by no means comprehensive list: Gillian Mears, Gail Jones, Joan London, Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Cate Kennedy, Charlotte Wood, Brenda Walker, David Malouf, Luke Davies, Kim Scott, Amanda Curtin ... I'm currently utterly absorbed in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan stories. In my fantasy writing life, like her I'd remain anonymous to everyone but my publisher.

Though I doubt a critic ever improved a writer's work, a good one makes a difference to a culture. They are rare and valuable. Bad critics are worse than bad writers, but I know from trying years ago that they have an equally good excuse. It is for this reason that I have avoided answering the question.

I always felt I had urgent news to deliver. I wanted to do that more than anything else.

For me, writing is the beginning of so much. It’s how I methodise my thoughts. How I explore issues. My books really are co-explorations with my readers.