Richard Flanagan Quotes

Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.

One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Acting, to me, is about the incredible adventure of examining the landscape of human heart and soul. That's basically what we do.

When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.

Visit your soul; don't visit your past.

Time to go inward, man, I hope I have the nerve, to take inventory of the causes that I serve.

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

To have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never known anyone.

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life.

For me, exploration is about that journey to the interior, into your own heart. I'm always wondering, how will I act at my moment of truth? Will I rise up and do what's right, even if every fiber of my being is telling me otherwise?

In life you only have to travel 6 inches. That is the distance from your mind to your heart.

I hoped that the trip would be the best of all journeys: a journey into ourselves.

A wise man travels to discover himself.

A traveller I am, and a navigator, and everyday I discover a new region within my soul.

Of all literary exercitations, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.

We are known in a depth of darkness through which we ourselves do not even dare to look. And at the same time, we are seen in a height of a fullness which surpasses our highest vision.

The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

You must walk alone to find your soul.

No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write, find out wether it spreading out its root in the deepest places of your heart...Delve into yourself for a deep answer

I'm trying to listen to my past, listen to what's most deeply going on inside myself, my creative set of fictional characters, a fictional world - to listen to that world, to search.