Richard Flanagan

“We live in a material world, not a dramatic one. And truth resides not in melodrama, but in the precise measure of material things.”

“An unskilled middle-aged man can work in the mines, and it pays well.”

“We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion.”

“The Bradshaws suggests an extraordinary civilisation that existed long before modern man reached the British Isles.”

“I love words because you can only live one life, but in a novel, you can live a thousand: you contain multitudes.”

“My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.”

“A Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard, who does believe in climate change, nevertheless advised her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, to abandon his emissions trading scheme.”

“I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was abou...”

“Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.”

“I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.”