Author

Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.

From Richard Flanagan

Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life, horror has no more form than it does meaning. Horror just is.

From Richard Flanagan

If you choose to take your compass from power, in the end you find only despair. But if you look around the world you can see and touch - the everyday world that is too easily dismissed as everyday - you see largeness, generosity, hope, change for the better. It's always small, but it's real.

From Richard Flanagan

Under Malcolm Fraser's Liberal governments in the 1970s, large numbers of refugees fleeing Vietnam in wretched boats were taken in without any great fuss.

From Richard Flanagan

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.

From Richard Flanagan

Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations started under federal government programmes, with large amounts of public money being lost.

From Richard Flanagan

I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false - because hope is the nub of what we are.

From Richard Flanagan