I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
You can spend a day in a library and feel: 'Great, I've done a day's work.' But it's only research, not writing. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Under Malcolm Fraser's Liberal governments in the 1970s, large numbers of refugees fleeing Vietnam in wretched boats were taken in without any… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Unlike some mainland black groups, Tasmanian Aborigines now have no traditional tribal culture left. It was taken from them with great violence… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Perhaps the virtue of coming from a place like Tasmania is that you had the great gift of knowing that you were… — 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
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
In reading, you sense the divine: the things that are larger and greater and more mysterious than yourself. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share
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
In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share
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
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
I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share
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
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
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
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
Family matters, friends matter, love matters. Those you love and who love you matter. That's what writing does - it allows you to say… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share
A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share
