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.
Richard FlanaganRead
I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false - because hope is the nub of what we are.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hope is an essential part of the human experience, even when writing about darker themes.
In this quote, Richard Flanagan reflects on the importance of hope as a fundamental aspect of humanity. He suggests that when addressing darker subjects in writing, the absence of hope would make the work feel inauthentic, as hope permeates our existence and informs how we perceive and respond to life’s challenges.
Themes
HopeDarknessHuman ExperienceWritingAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the role of hope in contemporary writing, one could quote Flanagan to emphasize its importance.
More from Richard Flanagan
All quotes →I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
Richard FlanaganRead
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.
Richard FlanaganRead
If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.
Richard FlanaganRead
Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what we are afraid to give tongue to.
Richard FlanaganRead
I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.
Richard FlanaganRead
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The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
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Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
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When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense.
Noam ChomskyRead