We lost our daughter, at 37, to breast cancer after she had fought it for 3 years. There was no torchlight procession for her or similar victims; no quilts stitched; no vote-grabbing politician appeared at our door with a lighted candle. We kept our grief private, up till now. One person a day dies in Australia of AIDS. Six women die every day in this country of breast cancer. One has a natural sympathy for AIDS sufferers, but people are dying all over the world every day, of a variety of diseases, of malnutrition, of political persecution. None of them, it seems, is fortunate enough to have the vocal and media support that the AIDS unfortunates seem able to muster."〔'Letters', ''Sydney Morning Herald'', 9 March 1995 p12〕

I went to the police gay and lesbian liaison unit and explained the moral baggage of my generation, but that I wanted to be as impartial as I could. They were very helpful. The book is a polemic about justice and respect for the other side. I don't go to gay bars and the sleaze ball but I write about the love that is in homosexuality. I don't paint Scobie Malone as an uncritical observer of the scene. There's so much of me in Malone. My prejudices are his. He gets rid of his in the book.〔