269 Quotes by Richard Flanagan

A coat hanger of a body trying to remember the coat that years before had fallen off

[...] intampina cu un zambet aproape tot ce spuneau ceilalti, in parte fiindca, in tinerete, descoperise ca asta ii usura drumul in viata, in parte fiindca era o masca, iar el gasea o mare placere in a-i insela pe ceilalti, castigandu-le increderea, convingandu-i ca n-au de ce sa se teama de el. Ca si tiganii, folosea mai multe masti: a vorbirii, a comportamentului, a personalitatii. Pentru ca, pe dedesubt, sa ramana el insusi.

She always preferred strong lies to weak truths

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

Because courage, survival, love—all these things didn’t live in one man. They lived in them all or they died and every man with them; they had come to believe that to abandon one man was to abandon themselves.

Once upon a time...long ago in a far-off place that everyone knows is not here or now or us.

The more people I am with, Dorrigo thought, the more alone I feel.

Billy Gould has always felt if something was worth doing, it was worth doing badly. Worry about doing it too well, he believed, & you may well be crippled by your ambition

Why at the beginning of things is there always light? Dorrigo Evans' earliest memories were of sun flooding a church hall in which he sat with his mother and grandmother. A wooden church hall. Blinding light and him toddling back and forth, in and out of its transcendent welcome, into the arms of women. Women who loved him. Like entering the sea and returning to the beach. Over and over.