Quotes from Thomas Keneally

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.

Now that I was a novelist, I could not face the ignominy of failing to produce novels.

It was a great gift which the National Socialist Party had given to the men of the SS, that they could go into battle without physical risk, that they could achieve honor without the contingencies that plagued the whole business of being shot at.

Tout le monde voulait être dans le coup ce jour-là. Car, ce jour-là, on allait écrire l'Histoire avec un grand H. Il y avait eu un ghetto à Cracovie pendant plus de sept siècles, et voici qu'à la fin de la journée, ou au plus tard le lendemein, ces sept siècles ne seraient plus qu'une rumeur, et Cracovie serait enfin fiduciare (débarrassée des juifs).

Later in the journey, Olek turned his head in against Henry's arm and began to weep. He would not at first tell Rosner what was wrong. When he did speak at last, it was to say that he was sorry to drag Henry off to Auschwitz. "To die just because of me," he said. Henry could have tried to soothe him by telling lies, but it wouldn't have worked. All the children knew about the gas. They grew petulant when you tried to deceive them.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

So nonetheless given the importance that was placed on sport in Australia, I wanted to be part of that scene, particularly since I had felt very strongly in my early schooling being marginalised even in the Catholic school.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.