You haven't done jack. Get up and get this room cleaned up right now!

You'd better get you a gun and kill him before he kills you or somebody.

In the gnarled willow trees by the brook I saw a tiny long-tailed titmouse disappear into a fork of a tree. The bird had entered a nest covered with lichens, and the nest looked exactly like the lichen-covered tree itself.}}

Australian publishing boomed and in the past 10 years the country's literary culture has undergone a mini golden age, capped by Carey's triumph at the 2001 Booker Prize. As one Australian arts administrator said to me many years ago: 'Listen, mate, if you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick.'