Novelists From Australia

"[U]nder the present condition of muddle in Mind-valuations, we must accept the accident a geographical isolation, and label our poetry "Australian."Beyond that, we have no concern for these variations in degree of rock and mud which pass for national distinctions on earth. Our valuation is one of Mind only, which disregards localisations in Time and Space, and which alone can become the symbol of a value in eternity."

"[N]o statement of a value in Art can have authority till the Art itself has forced that valuation on Life."

"The moral value of the Image in Art must consist in its power to arouse a conviction of Beauty.If a conviction of Beauty is aroused, all images of Passion and Action allied to it will become vitalized.Vitality in a work of Art thus becomes a communicable element in mind, and so fulfils its function of stimulating vitality in Life."

"Livingstone Hopkins had an infirmity common to most professional humorists; in himself, he was quite humourless."

"Words are cheap currency, but coin of the realm has the sincerity on it."

"I never indulge sentiment over broken friendships. We have extracted all we need from a friend, and so get rid of him on the same terms as he gets rid of us."

"It has been, up to this, Britain’s job to push civilized conditions into the earth’s crude spaces, and a lot of wowseristic Bible-thumping Boer farmers were only obstructing a Roman occupation of the earth’s surface."

"In the art of biography, the idolator is just as objectionable as the debunker."

"Sex is not only the basis of life, it is the reason for life."

"What you lack is the right connections, and that is what I've brought you here to make: connections. A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on and so forth until finally you can step across the threshold, almost one of the family."

"The main characters in this story, with whom you want to become intimate, are nowhere near here. They aren't expecting you; you mean nothing to them. If you think they're going to get out of their warm beds and travel miles to meet you, you are mistaken."

"Let's not be coy: you were hoping that I would satisfy all the desires you're too shy to name, or at least show you a good time. Now you hesitate, still holding on to me, but tempted to let me go."

"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether."

"I've studied Ulysses in depth and still think it's a great and ground-breaking book, a brave and sincere trail-blazer — but also massively self-indulgent, baggy, and irritating. Joyce was a wonderful liberator, but his approach is dangerous for a writer to emulate, since he had a massive ego and was convinced that every word he wrote was sacred. Have you seen his annotated proofs? He scarcely ever deleted a word, just added screeds and screeds more stuff in the margins. He also believed that people should, and would, read novels with the same slow, studious pondering of every word and phrase that they bring to ancient scripture, which I think is a stupid thing for a storyteller to expect."

"Trust is absolutely precious, and its betrayal horrifies me. I do want readers to trust me. And yet I don't want to offer them a safe, predictable ride. The literary scene seems to be divided between "trustworthy" authors who give their fans a Big Mac that's totally unchallenging, and more ambitious authors who treat their readers with high-handed indifference. I want to earn the reader's trust while remaining unpredictable. I take the reader to some dark and emotionally uncomfortable places but never just for the sake of it. And I do care about how you're feeling on your journey. Many people have remarked on how readable and engaging they found The Crimson Petal despite its great length. That wasn't accidental. I thought very carefully about how to keep the reader intimate and awake."

"It appears that we all labour under delusions."

"Ah, health and wealth, happiness and youth, joy and light, life and love! What a warm-hearted place is the world, how full of pleasure, good, and beauty, when fortune smiles! When fortune smiles!"

"But in all the wide world there was not a soul to hold out a hand to me, and I said bitterly, "There is no good in the world." In softer moods I said, "Ah, the tangle of it! Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have the power have not the heart.""

"Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand! Nothing to live for in life--no hope beyond the grave."

"I love you, I love you. Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, closer, tighter, tighter around you: a few more generations and you will be as enslaved as were ever the moujiks of Russia. I see it and know it, but I cannot help you. My ineffective life will be trod out in the same round of toil- I am only one of yourselves, I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a- woman!"

"Summer is fiendish, and life is a curse, I said in my heart. What a great dull hard rock the world was! On it were a few barren narrow ledges, and on these, by exerting ourselves so that the force wears off our finger-nails, it allows us to hang for a year or two, and then hurls us off into outer darkness and oblivion, perhaps to endure worse torture than this."

"Hope, sweet, cruel, delusive Hope, whispered in my ear that life was long with much by and by, and in that by and by my dream-life would be real. So on I went with that gleaming lake in the distance beckoning me to come and sail on its silver waters, and Inexperience, conceited, blind Inexperience, failing to show the impassable pit between it and me."

"We (999 out of every 1000) can see nought in sunsets save as signs and tokens whether we may expect rain on the morrow or the contrary, so we will leave such vain and foolish imagining to those poets and painters- poor fools!"

"I make no apologies for being egotistical."

"Provided a woman is beautiful allowance will be made for all her shortcomings. She can be unchaste, vapid, untruthful, flippant, heartless, and even clever; so long as she is fair to see men will stand by her, and as men, in this world, are "the dog on top", they are the power to truckle to. A plain woman will have nothing forgiven her. Her fate is such that the parents of uncomely female infants should be compelled to put them to death at their birth."

"I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls."

"To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing is rest."

"After all, what is there in vain ambition? King or slave, we all must die, and when death knocks at our door, will it matter whether our life has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true--true with the truth that will bring rest to the soul?"

"Christmas, only distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer..."

"If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot."

"Help! Help me! Please help me! Help me!"

"The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous."

"The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox."

"I get so scared sometimes. The suddenness of our age! Electronics, rockets, earth satellites, supersonic flight, and now this. It's not so much who invents them. It's the fact they exist. … Everything's going so fast, I'm just not ready to take it all in. It's, it's all so quick"

"God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible."

"I can transport matter — anything — at the speed of light, perfectly. Of course this is only a crude beginning, but I've stumbled on the most important discovery since man sawed off the end of a tree trunk and found the wheel. The disintegrator-integrator will change life as we know it. Think what it means. Anything, even humans, will go through one of these devices. No need for cars or railways or airplanes, even spaceships. We'll set up matter-receiving stations throughout the world, and later the universe. There'll never be famine. Surpluses can be sent instantaneously at almost no cost, anywhere. Humanity need never want or fear again. I'm a very fortunate man, Hélène."

"Now the sun touched the horizon and the man reined in his horse tiredly, glad that the time for prayer had come."

"Changi became my university instead of my prison. … Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life — the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving."

"Shogun is irresistible… I can't remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one… It's almost impossible not to continue to read Shogun once having opened it. Yet it is not only something that you read — you live it … possessed by the Englishman Blackthorne, the Japanese lord Toranaga and medieval Japan … People, customs, settings, needs and desires all become so enveloping you forget who and where you are."

"Although historians sometimes disputed the historical accuracy of Mr. Clavell's novels, no one doubted his gifts as a storyteller, or his ability to draw the reader into a faraway time and place."

"one of my favorite books-and I emphasize the word book here because I'm not talking about the movie-is The Godfather...Oh, yes, a book like Shogun."

"All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning."

"I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one. … In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money. … the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it."

"Changi for me — of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event — was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive."

"I was a teenager when that [referring to WW2] started and of course wars are fought by teenagers. Do you realize that? They really should be fought by the politicians and the old people who start these wars."

"I asked all kinds of people of every age, "You know the 'I pledge allegiance…'" but before I could finish, at once they would all parrot it, the words almost always equally blurred. In every case discovered that not one teacher, ever — or anyone — had ever explained the words to any one of them. Everyone just had to learn it to say it. The Children's Story came into being that day. It was then that I realized how completely vulnerable my child's mind was — any mind for that matter — under controlled circumstances. Normally I write and rewrite and re-rewrite, but this story came quickly — almost by itself. Barely three words were changed. It pleases me greatly because it keeps asking me questions … Questions like what's the use of "I pledge allegiance" without understanding? Like why is it so easy to divert thoughts and implant others? Like what is freedom and why is it so hard to explain? The Children's Story keeps asking me all sorts of questions I cannot answer. Perhaps you can — then your children will…"

"I'm going to work hard not to have any wrong thoughts!"

"Because Johnny was especially clever I think we should make him monitor for the whole week. Don't you?"

"I put the candy on the desk. So you know, it doesn't matter who you shut your eyes and pray to — to God, or anyone, even our leader — no one will ever give you anything. Only another human being … only I, or someone like me, can give you things. Praying to God or anyone for something is a waste of time."

"I'm going to pray to our leader every time!"