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

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.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace making the best of circumstances.

Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.

[I]t seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were all in the air.

I write about African women, that's really my topic. I have no shame or qualm in it because it's a very underrepresented topic, which is part of the reason I started to write.

It is such a social thing, laughing. Two thousand people in a room laughing is such a great buzz and they tend to laugh much more in a group.

A good home must be made, not bought. In the end, it's not track lighting or a sun room that brings light into a kitchen.

I've always been like, "Look, you're going to die and it's not going to matter after you die that you got out onstage and bombed."

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

Mad desire, when it has the most, longs for more

I think I always stand up for what I believe in.