Richard Flanagan said this quote

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

~ Richard Flanagan

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

~ Richard Flanagan

What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just material to be used to make the railway, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes.

~ Richard Flanagan

Men's lives are not progressions, as conventionally rendered in history paintings, nor are they a series of facts that may be enumerated & in their proper order understood. Rather they are a series of transformations, some immediate & shocking, some so slow as to be imperceptible, yet so complete & horrifying that at the end of his life a man may search his memory in vain for a moment of correspondence between his self in his dotage & him in his youth.

~ Richard Flanagan