I grew up very strongly with this sense of time being circular: that it constantly returned upon itself.

My father was the first to read in his family, and he said to me that words were the first beautiful thing he ever knew.

I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general.

I think if 'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is one of the high points of Japanese culture, then the experience of my father, who was a slave laborer on the Death Railway, represents one of its low points.

Family matters, friends matter, love matters. Those you love and who love you matter. That's what writing does - it allows you to say all those things.

The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.

I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.

What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the authority of their life and soul. The books I love are me, have become me.

A writer should never mark the page with their own tears.

A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.

There is a crisis that is not political - an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness - and we're completely unequal to dealing with it.

I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families.

I was one of six kids; my grandmother lived with us. We had an aunt who used to have nerves, and all her kids would turn up and live with us.

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.

There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.

The only accusation of Gillian Triggs with the ring of truth is that she has lost the confidence of the government - but then, so too has Tony Abbott.

Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.

The idea of some people being less than people is poison to any society and needs to be named as such in order to halt its spread before it turns the soul of a society septic.

My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.

Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.

War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.

Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet - in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.

We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.

What is needed to pass gay marriage is not a Democratic majority - this past year has proven that to be true - but politicians and judges comfortable enough to ignore what the majority of the voters want and do what is uncomfortable, unpopular - and morally right.

Equal rights should not be debatable and certainly should not be put to a vote of the people. Would we ask the electorate to vote on whether or not Catholics and Protestants should marry? Of course we would not.

One sure way to ruin American credibility in the Arab world is to sit silently in Damascus and look like you're part of the Assad show.

China understands economics more than most countries and is usually moved to increase freedoms when the yuan is directly involved.

Every once in a while, brave companies step out and act in ways that move customers and shareholders to also act in good faith.

Federal employees are public servants, not partisan foot soldiers for President Obama, and shouldn't have to decide whether a partisan White House request can be ignored without consequences.

Most people in Washington assumed if Obama made it to the White House he would appoint Biden as his secretary of state, a position Biden openly admitted he wanted.

While American interests in the Middle East must obviously be protected, America's credibility to support democracy for everyone everywhere is crucial.

Ironically, Hillary Clinton's appointment in 2008 as secretary of state was forced on Obama by her presidential campaign supporters, who insisted she play a major role in the then-new Democratic administration after a bruising primary fight.

John Kerry is going to have a rough tenure as secretary of state. But let's face it: whoever came after Hillary Clinton was going to have to deal with a foreign affairs press corps that has been sleeping for four years. From the moment Hillary entered Foggy Bottom, political reporters have treated their beloved secretary of state with kid gloves.

The mainstream media decided long ago that Hillary Clinton was going to be a fabulous global leader regardless of how she performed.

Foreign aid, though less than 1% of the annual federal budget, is often a hard case to make to constituents who are rightfully worried about domestic and economic issues.

U.S. foreign aid must be used more strategically to achieve our national security goals.

Foreign aid should not be automatic. Countries should have to make their case every year, and American officials should openly decide what, if anything, to fund.

U.S. academics and Upper East Side New Yorkers like to think of the United Nations as a place where foreign ambassadors have intellectual discussions about power and world peace.

Many people vote a straight party line from the president down to city council. Hollywood publicists need to think long and hard about who they are putting forward to lead their awards season campaigns.

While some entertainment executives understand the power of having someone else speak for you, most Hollywood publicists don't.

Obama has created a new world where countries ignore the U.S. without consequence. It's so bad that Saudi Arabia doesn't even want to serve on the Security Council with the U.S. because it might ruin their reputation.

When it comes to Iran, we must not accept Obama's inconsistencies and weakness.

When foreigners struggle for their freedoms, they've long expected the U.S. government to be the first to stand with them.

The Left sees no place for differing opinions.

The Obama Doctrine is to ignore an international crisis or go to war. There is no in between.

California is a great place to live.

Most Republicans in California are tired of fighting the one-party rule from the Left and have given up on state politics.

In order to get re-elected, Obama told us Al Qaeda was on the run and all but defeated.

Diplomacy and coalition-building are hard work and not easy for any president.

The money from wealthy nations to confront some very real global poverty and economic issues is largely given out of guilt.