In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

The List is Life.

But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.

But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.

I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.

Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.

The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.

It's only when you abandon your ambitions that they become possible.

The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All round its cramped margins lies the gulf.

When you slander someone [talk negatively about people], you earn a debit in your account and that person will earn a credit. Who would do these kinds of business?

As a result of the World War, this old Germany collapsed. It collapsed in its constitution, in its social order, in its economic structure. Its thinking and feeling changed.

Islam is a way of life which opens the heart to the meaning of existence. Thus any increase of outward splendor is usually a sign of a decrease in inward illumination

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

Taoism is the way of water. The most frequent element or symbol refered to in Lao Tzu's wrtings is the symbol of water.

The White House used to be, everybody looked up at the White House and America and everything, and now I think it's like a house of shame.

There's something sexy about a gut. Not a 400-pound beer gut, but a little paunch. I love that.

Do you know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country?

The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.