Thomas Keneally Quotes

The taste one gets of death in dreams I find more penetrating and atmospheric than the ordinary fear one might suffer while awake.

dreams death

Paradox is beloved of novelists. The despised savior, the humane whore, the selfish man suddenly munificent, the wise fool, and the cowardly hero. Most writers spend their lives writing about unexpected malice in the supposedly virtuous, and unexpected virtue in the supposedly sinful.

paradox writing

High Europe always played at ethnic contempt because it was High Europe, and so had the strength, the authority, to make the racial rules. We great unwashed of the outer world, on the coasts of new continents, though we might ourselves have behaved atrociously to indigenes, were baffled by the determination with which Europe returned to the frenzies of racial myth. Nice boys and not-so-nice boys took up the theme, put on the uniform, did the dirty work.

race ethics europe

Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.

virtue

Le parti national-socialiste avait fait un fameux cadeau? Ces SS-l? : ils pouvaient marcher au combat sans aucun risque physique, décrocher les honneurs sans avoir? Entendre siffler les balles. L'impunité psychologique était plus difficile? Atteindre. Tous les officiers SS avaient des camarades qui s'étaient suicidés. Le haut commandment avait pondu des circulaires pour dénoncer ces pertes futiles : il fallait être simple d'esprit pour croire que les juifs, parce qu'ils n'avaient pas de fusils, ne possédaient pas d'armes d'un autre calibre : des armes sociales, économiques et politiques. En fait, le juif était armé jusqu'aux dents. Trempez votre caractère dans l'acier, soulignaient les circulaires, car l'enfant juif est une bombe? Retardement culturelle, la femme juive, un tissu biologique de toutes les trahisons, le mâle juif, un ennemi plus implacable encore qu'aucun Russe ne saurait l'être. (ch. 20)

holocaust nazis

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

life

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.

pluralism thetimes time home

I was never any good at cricket thought I love it as a, as a sort of mystery.

mystery