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Quotes by Australian Authors
"Going after the unknown is always fascinating, I think. It becomes part of your life, this desire to know."
"You can (be a middle-aged comic) if you work very hard at it, because comedy is really hard."
"But laugh?" He pressed the flat of his hand against my stomach. "Here lives laugh." He ran his finger straight up to my mouth and spread his fingers. "Push back laugh is not good. Not healthy.""Also cry?" I asked. I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek with one finger."Also cry." He put his hand on his own belly. "Ha ha ha," he said, pressing his hand to show me the motion of his stomach. Then his expression changed to sad. "Huh huh huh," he heaved with exaggerated sobs, pressing his stomach again. "Same place. Not healthy to push down."
"The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis."
"The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern."
"Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing."
"Women are reputed never to be disgusted. The sad fact is that they often are, but not with men; following the lead of men, they are most often disgusted with themselves."
"Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man."
"There's a line of dancers waiting to get into Sydney Dance Company."
"To me that's what art is about - when you don't really have any control over your desires to do it."
"Promise me you'll never stop dreaming."
"You only have one life. Make sure that yours is one you are happy to be living."
"I do dance music, and I can be pretty camp myself from time to time."
"There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place."
"Hannah, do you think that your mum and dad and Tate's mum and dad and my mum and dad and Webb and Tate are all together someplace?' she asks earnestly. I look at Hannah, waiting for the answer. And then she smiles. Webb once said that a Narnie smile was a revelation and, at this moment, I need a revelation. And I get one. 'I wonder,' Hannah says."
"In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic."
"My return to London introduced me to a wider range of society."
"That might have a lot to do with it, but you know, I probably don't show fear, but I suffer from fear like everyone else."
"Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular."
"If someone tries to undermine your commitment, re-evaluateyour commitment to them."
"I've been in Washington ever since 1981, trying to get out!"
"I have crushed the cup of youth like a rose between my fingers but its nectar never warmed my weary heart."
"We're all crazy and the only difference between patients and their therapists is the therapists haven't been caught yet."
"There was a whole display set up of all the X-Men paraphernalia. My wife couldn't resist telling this 5-year-old boy that I was Wolverine. The little kid looked up at me and he was staring at me."
"My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense."
"I'm not running away from the fact that I had previously said I did not contemplate a major increase, and that was a fair statement of the Government's state of mind at the time I made that."
"Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life."
"It's a very brave thing to fall in love. You have to be willing to trust somebody else with your whole being, and that's very difficult, really difficult and very brave."
"I loved school, I loved putting on my uniform and doing homework every day. I was one of those good students that the teachers liked. I guess that's got to be a pretty nerdy, geeky part of me."
"If you make a decision that from here onward you will give the majority of your attention to happy thoughts, you will begin a process of purifying your body. Those happy thoughts will supply your body with the greatest health-booster you could possibly give it.There are endless excuses not to be happy. But if you put happiness off by saying "I'll be happy when..." you'll not only be delaying happiness for the rest of your life, you'll also be diminishing the health of your body. Happiness is your body's miracle elixir, so be happy NOW, no excuses!"
"Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, and rest a lot."
"I didn't set out to be famous; if I'd wanted that, I would have gone on Big Brother."
"It is hard sometimes to see how other actors are working when you are working with them."
"Because each are going to blame each other. The thing that Canberra has to really get right is the sharing of the resource. But my problem with people in the government who are there for a short time is that there's no consequences for some of these decisions they make."
"That odd idea that one person can go to a foreign part and in this rather odd voice describe it to the folks back home doesn't make much sense in the post-colonial world."
"I'll just be sitting down having dinner with girlfriends or something and people come up and ruin the dinner."
"Drinking habits were very prevalent among men, and were not in any way disgraceful, unless excessive."
"Everything I did that required effort, I opened my mouth. Even to catch a ball, I opened my mouth."
"She took another step. The simple motion of her moving leg was like a dance, the unexaggerated shifting of her hip entrancing as a fire. The arch of her bare foot said more of sex than anything I'd seen in my young life."
"Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience."
"To send our troops, our ships, our planes to this war is ridiculous."
"I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They're just so traditional and so specific in their ways. It's kind of untouched, it's not Americanized."
"Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it."
"To me I've just really, really found a relaxed, peaceful side of my life and I'm enjoying it."
"I wouldn't call it bitter. I think it's just sweet. I've always believed my life seems like it's gotten better and better as each decade has gone by. So I don't see any I don't see any bitterness about it."
"Most people are fine with fine and okay with okay. If you want to be the best you can be, make sure you're not."
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