It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them.

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.

So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?

Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

The thing we need most is each other.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

On average, Australians watch more than three hours of television a day, compared with 12 minutes a day spent by the average couple talking to each other.

. . . you must not build upon foundations of prayer and contemplation alone, for, unless you strive after the virtues and practice them, you will never grow to be more than dwarfs.

We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.

In all great civilizations, garden discourses have belonged to larger discourses about beauty, the good life, the relation of humankind to nature, and so on.

Some of us, perhaps all of us, believe that it is legitimate to kill enemy soldiers in a war, as if war were a special circumstance that shrinks the sizes of enemy souls.

And seek for truth in the groves of Academe.

When we have money, we start making mistakes.

Beauty,’ Brimstone had scoffed once. ‘Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.

I couldn't be anorexic because I like food too much, and I couldn't be bulimic because I hate throwing up too much.

Alot of peo­ple think our lives are all about tak­ing pic­tures and stuff like that. But it becomes a real bother when they're tak­ing pic­tures of you all the time.

Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible.