Richard Flanagan

We live in a material world, not a dramatic one.

— Richard Flanagan

What reality was ever made by realists?

— Richard Flanagan

A writer should never mark the page with their own tears.

— Richard Flanagan

The path to survival was to never give up on the small things.

— Richard Flanagan

I do not come out of a literary tradition.

— Richard Flanagan

My mother hoped I'd be a plumber.

— Richard Flanagan

A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

— Richard Flanagan

Yep, I often lit the barbie with old drafts.

— Richard Flanagan

I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.

— Richard Flanagan

My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.

— Richard Flanagan

A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.

— Richard Flanagan

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

— Richard Flanagan

Literary prizes serve a purpose if they allow for discussion of books.

— Richard Flanagan

My ancestors came from Co Roscommon, transported to Van Diemen's Land for stealing food.

— Richard Flanagan

We live in a material world, not a dramatic one. And truth resides not in melodrama, but in the precise measure of…

— Richard Flanagan

“The most important thing is our dignity. If we have that we can survive on bread and water.”

— Richard Flanagan

We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we…

— Richard Flanagan

Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet - in many respects,…

— Richard Flanagan

If war illuminates love, love offers the possibility of allowing some light to be brought back out of the shadows. It's almost…

— Richard Flanagan

I had long wanted to write a love story, and I had long - wisely, I felt - shirked the challenge because…

— Richard Flanagan

The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish - the largest in the world - is in doubt…

— Richard Flanagan

Black Saturday reminded many Australians of what they know only too well: that of all the advanced economies, Australia is perhaps the…

— Richard Flanagan

Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations…

— Richard Flanagan

I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not…

— Richard Flanagan

I do feel like a fraud a lot of the time because I've never been interested in people who say 'I'm a…

— Richard Flanagan

The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we…

— Richard Flanagan

“As the cards fluttered to earth, as everyone’s hand was revealed as worthless, as every point won was shown to be a…

— Richard Flanagan

“He felt the withering of something, the way risk was increasingly eliminated, replaced with a bland new world where the viewing of…

— Richard Flanagan

“Under the influence of mercury, which he administered to himself daily as a salve for his syphilis, & laudanum, which he drank…

— Richard Flanagan

“… behind which the panting dog drooped like a dropped chamois. It was too hot to smoke, but he smoked his pipe…

— Richard Flanagan

“As the prisoners’ commanding officer and senior medical officer, Dorrigo Evans reported to Major Nakamura that four men had died the day…

— Richard Flanagan

“They found him late that night. He was floating head-down in the benjo, the long, deep trench of rain-churned shit that served…

— Richard Flanagan

“He just stared into the flames. 2 A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else. In his…

— Richard Flanagan

“And in all his life around him, Darky Gardiner for the first time sensed his own death. He understood that all this…

— Richard Flanagan

“Later, crying became simply affirmation of feeling, and feeling the only compass in life. Feeling became fashionable and emotion became a theatre…

— Richard Flanagan

“He pulled out a book here and there, but what kept catching his attention were the diagonal tunnels of sunlight rolling in…

— Richard Flanagan

“definitions belong to the definer, not the defined, & I no longer wished to have my life & death foretold by others.…

— Richard Flanagan

“... and she would know that love is not goodness, and nor is it happiness… For Amy, love was the universe touching,…

— Richard Flanagan

I think writing should be about change.

— Richard Flanagan

I am the happiest writing and being with the people I love.

— Richard Flanagan