269 Quotes by Richard Flanagan

Darky was always looking for the good thing, no matter how small, and consequently he often found it.

As they made their way to the coast, he bemoaned the hotel trade in the manner, Dorrigo felt, that those who love what they do bemoan their passion the most.

I think it’s always wrong of writers to make too much of the pains of their labors, because most people have much worse jobs and suffer such indignities and hardships.

We have a very foolish notion in Western countries that progress delivers freedom. But progress doesn’t necessarily bring moral virtue.

It’s a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.

And one thing, as they sometimes do, led not to another, but shattered a world.

The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made no longer of lies but truth, built not of rich men’s hate but our love for our island and for each other.

I’m afraid a lot of people have lost a lot of money over the years betting on me.

In the end all that was left was the heat and the clouds of rain, and insects and birds and animals and vegetation that neither knew nor cared. Humans are only one of many things, and all these things long to live, and the highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a cloud, bamboo to be bamboo. Decades.