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

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.

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

I don't eat junk foods and I don't think junk thoughts.

I'm totally down with insurrection in the street. I've had a great time with that over the years. Insurrection in the voting booth is the other part of the equation.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Marriage isn't about winning. It's about lasting.

Parents with meager means have the same aspirations for their children as other parents. Children from poor families have the same needs as other children.

Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.

It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.

Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.

I must stress, basically, the very fact that we do have orangutan rehabilitation means that we have failed to do what is really important, and that is rescue the wild orangutan in its habitat.