Richard Flanagan Quotes

A good book...leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

The most important thing is our dignity. If we have that we can survive on bread and water.

In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle. I just didn’t expect to end up with the chicken.

Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.

He felt the withering of something, the way risk was increasingly eliminated, replaced with a bland new world where the viewing of food preparation would be felt to be more than the reading of poetry; where excitement would come from paying for a soup made out of foraged grass. He had eaten soup made out of foraged grass in the camps; he preferred food.

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs.

The more people I am with, Dorrigo thought, the more alone I feel.

Once upon a time...long ago in a far-off place that everyone knows is not here or now or us.