My father was the first to read in his family, and he said to me that words were the first beautiful thing… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
“Why at the beginning of things is there always light? Dorrigo Evans' earliest memories were of sun flooding a church hall in… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
My secret skill is baking bread. My mother was a farmer's daughter and still made bread every day when I was a… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
“He felt more soft raindrops, saw bright-red oil against the brown mud, heard his mother calling again, but it was unclear what… — 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
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
