Thomas Keneally Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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

Thomas Keneally
Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.

Thomas Keneally
In times like these, he said, it must be hard for the churches to go on telling people that their Heavenly Father cared about the death of even a single sparrow. He'd hate to be a priest, Herr Schindler said, in an era like this, when life did not have the value of a packet of cigarettes. Stern agreed but suggested, in the spirit of the discussion, that the Biblical reference Herr Schindler had made could be summed up by a Talmudic verse which said that he who saves the life of one man, saves the entire world.

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

Thomas Keneally
Personal finances are like people's personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

Thomas Keneally
We have found that it is possible for Australians to have literary ideas about the place, that Australia is not outside the universe. In short Australia – which used to have one unifying rite, cricket – has now become pluralist. I cannot but predict it will be a disaster for Australian cricket.

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

Thomas Keneally
He was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.

Thomas Keneally
It is not too fantastic to say that he desired them with some of the absolute passion that characterised the exposed and flaming heart of Jesus which hung on Emilie's wall. Since this narrative has tried to avoid the canonisation of the Herr Direktor, the idea of the sensual Oskar as the desirer of souls has to be proved.

Thomas Keneally
It was so like old times that Henry found himself smiling down at Olek and Mance, playing to her, capable of ignoring the rest. It did seem for those seconds that the earth had at last been pacified by music.

Thomas Keneally