Thomas Keneally Quotes
"And I definitely wanted to be a writer, but I felt a duty now, having used up those educational resources, I felt a duty to the church and my parents to become a priest."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Church, Duty, Now, Parents, Writer)
"And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Design, Church, Sexuality)
"And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Hell, Taste)
"I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Being, Children, Memories, Writers)
"I was never any good at cricket thought I love it as a, as a sort of mystery."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Love, Thought, Cricket, Mystery)
"And I was very interested in the priesthood."
- Thomas Keneally
"But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Home, Time, Practice, School)
"But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs."
- Thomas Keneally
"Australia integrated the - brought on the ships and unleashed in the society the dogs of sectarianism, which had existed in other places - in Glasgow, in Liverpool and of course in Ireland, north and south."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Society, Dogs, Ireland, Ships)
"I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Thought, Writer)
"In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Catholicism, Company)
"You know, so I was a weird eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Power, Being, Temperament, Word)
"My brother arrived some months after my father left. Um, and he ah, was thus eight years younger than me and it was um, you know, it was such a time that my mother probably had people wondering was it his."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Time, Mother, Father, Brother, People, Months, Years)
"So I remember both medicine, because I frequently sick, particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then, and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Religion, Being, Medicine, Sense, Treatment)
"So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart."
- Thomas Keneally
"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."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Being, Importance, School)
"Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Mother, Name)
"Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Christian, Brothers)
"And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Folly, Mind)
"And so um, I knew that I really didn't want to be a priest and didn't want to be a celibate, though I could probably manage it. Um, and um, ultimately I left."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Want)