Michael Leunig

“As a child, I dreamed that my bed could fly and glide and swoop and hover high over the countryside near my home while, snug and secure, I looked down in wonder at the great carpet of life t...”

“How many times have I heard people say, 'I became very ill a couple of years ago; it got very serious, and I look back and give thanks for how it changed me and the truth I found.'”

“Fogs are like dreams that feed the soul, and without their mysterious embrace, childhood, courtship, poetry and the composition of music become all the more difficult.”

“The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of...”

“Who can protest alone? Who dares rise up? It is not easy. One is all alone, and evermore shall be so.”

“Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know.”

“Sweetheart,' 'darling,' 'luv.' I like these words; they fit me like a comfortable old pullover. I remember them from childhood; that's what innocent little boys were called by cheerful aunti...”

“I sense that the road to Heaven is paved with dashed hopes.”

“Sadly, semi-consciousness, along with daydreaming, is a capacity that is actively discouraged among children in schools, and our society is much poorer and harsher as a consequence. The valu...”

“The 'economy' became a god such as never before, and a happy, successful society was one that could please this god - sometimes by sacrificing beautiful things - to keep the deity from getti...”

“I think we live in delusional times, whether it's with a great ability to totally distract ourselves with technology, or with speed and the velocity of life.”

“We might imagine that Jesus had many human faults. He failed most humanly, in my reckoning, when he killed the fig tree just because it didn't bear any figs for his breakfast; that was a dis...”

“There can be many reasons to travel, but wandering into the world for no particular reason is a sublime madness, which in all its whimsy and pointlessness may depict the story of life - and...”

“Today, people call each other 'guys' - this derives from Guy Fawkes, the bomb-making terrorist. No greater tribute has ever been paid to anyone in the history of politics.”

“Citizens, regardless of their political inclinations, carry a devout sense of their shared culture and its temperament - and, having contributed to it all their lives, hold decent and reason...”

“I give thanks for the fact that I can get this stick with a bit of steel nib on the end, dip it in some black carbon stuff, and draw on paper. Now, people did it the same way 2,000 years ago...”

“Wars don't happen on battlefields; they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire.”

“The disasters of war can be infinitely eerie and poignant.”

“Easter is not limited to the passion and death of Christ; it also includes the dismal tragedy of life unlived by the many, and all the loss of passion and truth that goes with it.”

“Pre-Christmas is very important, and it is stressful, and, you know, even in the biblical story... travelling on the donkey in a stressful environment.”