Thomas Keneally quotes:

Australia integrated the - brought on the ships and unleashed in the society the dogs of sectarianism, which had existed in other places - in Glasgow, in Liverpool and of course in Ireland, north and south.

But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.

But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.

In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.

The List is Life.", Schindler's List

So nonetheless given the importance that was placed on sport in Australia, I wanted to be part of that scene, particularly since I had felt very strongly in my early schooling being marginalised even in the Catholic school.

Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know.

Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.

It was so like old times that Henry found himself smiling down at Olek and Mance, playing to her, capable of ignoring the rest. It did seem for those seconds that the earth had at last been pacified by music.

So I remember both medicine, because I frequently sick, particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then, and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy.

And I definitely wanted to be a writer, but I felt a duty now, having used up those educational resources, I felt a duty to the church and my parents to become a priest.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

The dogs were really keening now, like Irish widows.

And so um, I knew that I really didn't want to be a priest and didn't want to be a celibate, though I could probably manage it. Um, and um, ultimately I left.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.

I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.

You know, so I was a weird eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins."

Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

Coitus is random, children are definite.

He was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

I was never any good at cricket thought I love it as a, as a sort of mystery.

It is not too fantastic to say that he desired them with some of the absolute passion that characterised the exposed and flaming heart of Jesus which hung on Emilie's wall. Since this narrative has tried to avoid the canonisation of the Herr Direktor, the idea of the sensual Oskar as the desirer of souls has to be proved.

It's only when you abandon your ambitions that they become possible.

Personal finances are like people's personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't

The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All round its cramped margins lies the gulf.

The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.

Though, as he was torn into a pink upper air, she was a good craft to ride in, for her belly was firm and her breasts enabled a flying man good hold and emotions of heady safety. . . . Steering her peasant tits he bounded off stars.

Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular.

Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.