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 Copy Share Image
There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Everything about The Bradshaws is controversial, fluid, uncertain: their age - perhaps 30,000 years old, perhaps older, perhaps more recent - who… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
When I was younger, I was full of smart things to say about all my books. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I went to study at Oxford University in the 1980s on an imperial scholarship instituted by Cecil Rhodes. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
In reading, you sense the divine: the things that are larger and greater and more mysterious than yourself. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Within white Australia, there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation - a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Murder and hate are as deeply buried in the human heart as love, perhaps more so, and in truth they're rather entwined, and if… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
My father was the first to read in his family, and he said to me that words were the first beautiful thing he ever… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast,… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
