“ The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security—national, ind… Richard Flanagan
“ Vassals of an outdated ideology unrelated to the real world, they can, when questioned on this issue, only mumble neoliberal mantras that have delivered the world economic stagnation, rising inequalit… Richard Flanagan
“ The most important thing is our dignity. If we have that we can survive on bread and water. Richard Flanagan
“ One small boy jumps over a table, pulls his jumper and shirt up, and turns his back to us to show where shrapnel wounded him when he was three. His classmates shriek with laughter. Richard Flanagan
“ Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and damned flowing through Europe is my family. And there is no time in the future in which they might be hel… Richard Flanagan
“ Rough work with a soul will always be open to all, including condemnation & reviling, while fine work housing emptiness is closed to all insults & is easily ivied over with paid praises Richard Flanagan
“ … behind which the panting dog drooped like a dropped chamois. It was too hot to smoke, but he smoked his pipe anyway. The smoke wreathed a strange smile that Dorrigo later came to realise was fixed;… Richard Flanagan
“ 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689. Richard Flanagan
“ To be fair to them, they were only after something that walled them off from the past and from people in general, not something that offered any connection that might prove painful or human. Thet want… Richard Flanagan
“ Her eyes burnt like the blue in a gas flame. They were ferocious things. For some moments her eyes were all he was aware of. And they were looking at him. But there was no look in them. It was as if s… Richard Flanagan
“ I think if 'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is one of the high points of Japanese culture, then the experience of my father, who was a slave laborer on the Death Railway, represents one of its low… Richard Flanagan
“ For an instant he thought he grasped the truth of a terrifying world in which one could not escape horror, in which violence was eternal, the great and only verity, greater than the civilisations it c… Richard Flanagan
“ Because courage, survival, love—all these things didn’t live in one man. They lived in them all or they died and every man with them; they had come to believe that to abandon one man was to abandon th… Richard Flanagan
