Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.

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.

I hate you. I love you. But I am free.

Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.

I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.

I was fine with everything except Maths. I was terrible at Maths.

While we are sleeping, two-thirds of the world is plotting to do us in.

Lets nail it down, lets get it right.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

The scars will take me far, they always do.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen: even less, the trouble I've successfully avoided.

An organization needs to be constantly refreshed.