A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still he searched, one more Ithaca for which he was forever bound.
I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.
I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles.
A Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard, who does believe in climate change, nevertheless advised her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, to abandon his emissions trading scheme.
My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.