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.

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.

Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

The List is Life.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.

Book:Sharing of life and experiences with other people.This is lifetime notes for all generations.

Every man has two counties--his own and America.

Developments in medical technology have long been confined to procedural or pharmaceutical advances, while neglecting a most basic and essential component of medicine: patient information management.

Sometimes if your only approach is cutting spending at a time when the economy's contracting, then the economy will contract further.

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress.

Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided. Liberals consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad people.

A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.

It seems the brighter you are, the deeper the hole you get into.

We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.