Thomas Keneally Quotes & Sayings

“And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.”

“But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.”

“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.”

“And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.”

“And I was very interested in the priesthood.”

“Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular.”

“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.”