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

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.

I think it's a lovely idea, but it will not pass the Congress. I live in a world of realities. The policy of our country is that we can drill our way to independence. I think that's a march to folly.

When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion.

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.

The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself.

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.

It may be assumed as an axiom that Providence has never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly.

My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me.

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.

The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can.

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.