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Richard Flanagan Quotes

Powerful Richard Flanagan for Daily Growth

About Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan is an acclaimed Australian novelist, screenwriter, and essayist, born on March 13, 1961, in Launceston, Tasmania. Raised in a working-class family, Flanagan's upbringing greatly influenced his writing, as he often explores themes of identity, history, and the human condition within the context of Australia's colonial past. Flanagan studied law at the University of Tasmania before turning to writing full-time. His literary career took off in 1994 with the publication of his debut novel, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping," which was shortlisted for numerous awards. This was followed by "The Unknown Territory" (1998) and "Death of a River Guide" (2001), both critically acclaimed. However, it was his fourth novel, "Gould's Book of Fish" (2002), that brought Flanagan international recognition. The novel, set in the late 18th century, tells the story of the naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin, and won numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. In 2014, Flanagan published "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," a novel inspired by his father's experiences as a prisoner of war in Thailand during World War II. The book won the Man Booker Prize, making Flanagan the first Australian laureate since Peter Carey in 2001. Flanagan's works are characterized by their rich language, profound insights, and unflinching exploration of Australia's colonial history. His writing often challenges readers to confront the complexities and injustices of the past and the present. He continues to be a significant figure in Australian literature, contributing thought-provoking essays and engaging in public discourse on a variety of topics.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"We are not our own, we belong to place."

This quote by Richard Flanagan suggests that individuals are intrinsically connected to a place; it is part of our identity and essence. It implies that we don't just inhabit or visit locations, but rather we belong to them in a profound and spiritual way. The places where we grow up, live, work, or simply spend time shape us and become an integral aspect of who we are. In short, this quote underscores the idea that our sense of self is deeply intertwined with the geographical locations that touch our lives.

"Everyone has a war. Some are fought and some are not, but they are all in the end internal wars against ourselves."

This quote by Richard Flanagan highlights that every individual experiences some form of personal struggle or conflict, which can be likened to an 'internal war'. These battles could manifest in various ways such as self-doubt, fear, anger, guilt, or any other emotions that challenge our sense of identity and purpose. Some people choose to actively confront these struggles, while others may suppress them, but ultimately, they are all internal battles that we wage against ourselves. This profound insight encourages us to acknowledge and address our inner conflicts in order to grow, learn, and become the best versions of ourselves.

"Time is the great healer, but it is also the great forgetter."

This quote highlights a paradoxical nature of time: while it has the power to heal wounds and alleviate pain over time, it simultaneously erases memories and experiences, making us forget or lose touch with our past. It suggests that as we move forward in life, we may find solace and peace, but at the cost of losing connections to our history.

"The past is not another country; we carry it with us always."

Richard Flanagan's quote signifies that the past isn't a separate, distant entity but an integral part of who we are in the present. Our experiences, memories, and learnings from the past continue to shape our thoughts, emotions, and actions in the here and now. We don't merely visit the past; rather, it remains embedded within us, influencing our choices, decisions, and understanding of life as we move forward.

"History is a great silence, a blank, an emptiness, and then for an instant, a word, a phrase, and again silence."

This quote by Richard Flanagan underscores the transient nature of recorded history. He suggests that the vast majority of human experience is unrecorded or forgotten, existing as a void. Yet, at times, we glimpse moments in history through a word, a phrase, leaving us with a fleeting connection to the past. This quote emphasizes the fragmentary and elusive nature of historical knowledge, and the profound impact that even a single piece of information can have on our understanding of the past.

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.

- Richard Flanagan

Question, Harbour, Refugees, Australian

My secret skill is baking bread. My mother was a farmer's daughter and still made bread every day when I was a child. She would have me knead the dough when I got home from school.

- Richard Flanagan

Every Day, Secret, Got, Baking

Within white Australia, there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation - a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000 to demand the government say sorry for past injustices.

- Richard Flanagan

Past, Within, Peaked, Marching

I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.

- Richard Flanagan

Which, Literary, Am, Honoured

In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.

- Richard Flanagan

Government, Inquiry, Forcible

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.

- Richard Flanagan

Love, Death, Deal, Rings

My mother hoped I'd be a plumber.

- Richard Flanagan

Mother, Hoped, Plumber

We live in a material world, not a dramatic one. And truth resides not in melodrama, but in the precise measure of material things.

- Richard Flanagan

Material Things, Dramatic, Resides

In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out.

- Richard Flanagan

Island, Being, Ecological, Forests

I was one of six kids; my grandmother lived with us. We had an aunt who used to have nerves, and all her kids would turn up and live with us.

- Richard Flanagan

Grandmother, Six, Had, Aunt

Logging is an industry driven solely by greed. It prospers with government support and subsidies, and it is accelerating its rate of destruction, so that Tasmania is now the largest hardwood chip exporter in the world.

- Richard Flanagan

Industry, Largest, Chip, Prospers

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.

- Richard Flanagan

Mind, Darwinism, Seemed, Infernal

Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations started under federal government programmes, with large amounts of public money being lost.

- Richard Flanagan

Politics, Through, Organisations

'The Bradshaws' is the appropriately inappropriate English title given to an enigma - some hundreds of thousands of mysterious rock art paintings scattered through the wilds of the Kimberley, an area larger than Germany in the remote, scarcely populated northwest of Australia.

- Richard Flanagan

Through, Some, Larger, Inappropriate

God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions.

- Richard Flanagan

Mundane, Great Stories, Fictions

John Howard, willing to apologise to home owners for rising interest rates, would not say sorry to Aborigines. He refused to condone what he referred to as 'a black armband version' of history, preferring a jingoistic nationalism.

- Richard Flanagan

Rising, Interest Rates, Condone

The Bradshaws suggests an extraordinary civilisation that existed long before modern man reached the British Isles.

- Richard Flanagan

British, Before, Modern Man, Civilisation

I read incessantly, searching for the things that might move me.

- Richard Flanagan

Might, Move, Read, Incessantly

Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted.

- Richard Flanagan

Black, Australia, Services, Dried

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

- Richard Flanagan

Journey, Like, Ever, Report

I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general.

- Richard Flanagan

Literature, General, Admirer

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.

- Richard Flanagan

Love, Love Story, Felt, Wisely

We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.

- Richard Flanagan

Love, Think, Ubiquitous, Apprehend

The 2007 Labor campaign was the most presidential in Australian history, with a slogan - Kevin07 - exceeded in its banality only by its success.

- Richard Flanagan

Labor, Australian, Exceeded, Presidential

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.

- Richard Flanagan

Old, More, Painted, Controversial

Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.

- Richard Flanagan

Other, Ballot, Among, Universal Suffrage

I think if 'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is one of the high points of Japanese culture, then the experience of my father, who was a slave laborer on the Death Railway, represents one of its low points.

- Richard Flanagan

Death, Deep, I Think, Railway

Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.

- Richard Flanagan

Death, Deep, Line, Railway

My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.

- Richard Flanagan

Father, Death, Built, Railway

I was struck by the way Europeans see history as something neatly linear. For me, it's not that; it's not some kind of straight railway.

- Richard Flanagan

Some, Linear, Neatly, Railway

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