My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
Generally, literary prizes are significant not for who the winner is but the discussion they create around books. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
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 about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
I hate the way my life has been inexplicably overwhelmed by questionnaires. Life is so much stranger and so much more beautiful than the lists that reduce it to an anorexic assembly of tics and obsessions. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
My secret skill is baking bread. My mother was a farmer’s daughter and still made bread every day when I was a child. She would have me knead the dough when I got home from school. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
I love all forms of music. I even like music I dislike, because the music you dislike is like going to a strange country, and it forces you to rethink everything and to appreciate its particular joys. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
Perhaps the virtue of coming from a place like Tasmania is that you had the great gift of knowing that you were not the centre of things, yet life was no less where you were. Richard Flanagan Read Quote
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 Read Quote
