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
dislike forces forms love music particular rethink strange
I love all forms of music. I even like music I dislike, because the music you dislike is like going to a strange country, and it forces you to rethink everything and to appreciate its particular joys.
dies discover eternity great love moment seek stories truth
Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.
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.
allowing almost brought love offers possible understanding war
If war illuminates love, love offers the possibility of allowing some light to be brought back out of the shadows. It's almost as if they buttress and make possible an understanding of each other.
felt hardest love
I had long wanted to write a love story, and I had long - wisely, I felt - shirked the challenge because I felt it the hardest story of all to write.
literary
I do not come out of a literary tradition.
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.
carbon chapter death final labor
It may be that the carbon tax is the final chapter in the strange death of Labor Australia.
contained form given horror life within
Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life, horror has no more form than it does meaning. Horror just is.
anorexic assembly life lists reduce stranger
I hate the way my life has been inexplicably overwhelmed by questionnaires. Life is so much stranger and so much more beautiful than the lists that reduce it to an anorexic assembly of tics and obsessions.
greater larger
In reading, you sense the divine: the things that are larger and greater and more mysterious than yourself.
history report
History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.
admirer great japanese
I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general.