And I was very interested in the priesthood.

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.

And I was very interested in the priesthood.

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.

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.

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.

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

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

I was never any good at cricket thought I love it as a, as a sort of mystery.

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.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.

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

Personal finances are like peoples personal health crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

The dogs were really keening now like Irish widows.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.

Digital intimacy ruins the appetite for the real thing. So, when kids are gaming or even when spouses are gaming, they lose their appetite for genuine intimacy. Kids lose their appetite for getting their intimacy needs, their hunger for significance and attachment, with the family, and it erodes the relationship between them and their parents.

Hate misleads fear distorts and love blinds.

Figure skating is a bit dated - it's like that tweed jacket you pull out of the back of your closet from time to time, and I'm going to try to Chanel it up a little bit.

I'm glad I was a teacher.

Unions inherently create an 'us versus them' dynamic that makes winning against a company's management the top goal, not serving customers, innovating, or in the case of education, teaching kids.

It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.

I do all my shopping on the Web. I do much of my research online. I have a blog, too. It is definitely a distraction. It is definitely a blessing. What blessing isn't a distraction, though?

Peace and security of our planet must be based on the collective action of all nations, not a few, however powerful they may be.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.

Death is an awful thing. I don't believe in it myself.

We moralize among ruins.

I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.

My clothes have always got a very strong dynamic rapport with the body - they are very body conscious, they help you to look glamorous, more hourglass, more woman.

There will always be a reason why you meet people. Either you need them to change your life or youre the one that will change theirs.

No pain, no gain.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

Yes, I think I have the best swing on the Tour. Why have scores comedown in the last ten years? Partly because they are imitating me.

The issue in Web accessibility is the fact that blind and visually-impaired people need the single biggest boost to achieve equivalence, since the real-world Web is a visual medium.

Dogma in science really is humiliating when it is recognized as dogma.

There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security.

I said to myself a long time ago that I didn't want to be that hanging-on-for-too-long, aging-rock-musician guy, and that's why I sort of got away from music.

Not everybody's a baseball fan.