The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

Richard Flanagan

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

— Richard Flanagan

Under Malcolm Fraser's Liberal governments in the 1970s, large numbers of refugees fleeing Vietnam in wretched boats were taken in without any great fuss.

— Richard Flanagan

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

— Richard Flanagan

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My mother hoped I'd be a plumber.

— Richard Flanagan

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But what reality was ever made by realists?

— Richard Flanagan

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