Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan
Richard Miller Flanaganis an Australian novelist from Tasmania. "Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist, each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours. He also has written and directed feature films. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryAustralia
allow hope people realised recognise wished
I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false - because hope is the nub of what we are.
fall thinking wish
I think sometimes writers must attempt to communicate the incommunicable, because, whether they wish it or not, they're the ones to whom it falls.
common courage writers
In all the writers I admire, the common detonator is their courage to walk naked.
man
In Australia, the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle.
darwinism demise mind offer proof seemed striking supposed truth victorian
Nothing seemed to offer more striking proof to the late Victorian mind of the infernal truth of social Darwinism than the supposed demise of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
contain life love
I love words because you can only live one life, but in a novel, you can live a thousand: you contain multitudes.
I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
authority books creates grace lends life love missed moment people reader talk
What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the authority of their life and soul. The books I love are me, have become me.
advanced change climate perhaps reminded saturday vulnerable
Black Saturday reminded many Australians of what they know only too well: that of all the advanced economies, Australia is perhaps the one most vulnerable to climate change.
age painted perhaps recent
Everything about The Bradshaws is controversial, fluid, uncertain: their age - perhaps 30,000 years old, perhaps older, perhaps more recent - who painted them, what they mean.
art create darkness deal deny expression false greatest hope life love rings stories untrue war
War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.
novelist plots several
After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
books famous great japanese narrow poet road written
'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.
man reached
The Bradshaws suggests an extraordinary civilisation that existed long before modern man reached the British Isles.