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
Through my youth, there was imposed on us a culture relentlessly English. English books were all you could buy; English television filled… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
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
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
Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English. — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I come from a tiny mining town in the rainforest in an island at the end of the world. My grandparents were… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
In the late 19th century, the theory that the Aborigines were an inferior race that was doomed to die out became accepted… — Richard Flanagan Copy Share Image
I said in my acceptance speech that I hope that readers remember this not as the year I won the Booker, but… — 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
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
