Quotes from Christos Tsiolkas

Over the years Saul has heard of Yeshua's teaching and they never made any sense to him: sometimes he had preached as a devout Jew, but at others spoke as an apostate. He had some learning but no understanding, and he did not keep faith with the Lord's sacred words. That was why his followers had been led astray into blasphemy and perversion. That was why Saul spied on them, bore witness against them. But now he is in their house and they have saved him

It's alright," they say, "Of course, there's beauty there," but they hold back; you know they have seen or heard of the ugliness and the insularity there. They have experienced the farawayness of it. I have learned to keep silent, not to berate them for their disregard of the Brits' role in the colonial tragedy of my country.

It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.

Dan had discovered that he had been mistaken, that books did not exist outside of the body and only in mind, but that words were breath, that they were experienced and understood through the inseparability of mind and body, that words were the water and reading was swimming. Just as he had in water, he could lose himself in reading: mind and body became one.

You didn't always have to give it back. And in that cold, somber chapel, Dan Kelly discovered that there were some things that you could not be forgiven for, and those were the things that you carried into the next life, if there was such a place; and if there was no next life nor any God, the consequence was the same: if you were not forgiven, you would die with regret.