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

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.

When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.

Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

I suppose you could sum up the religious aspects of my boyhood by saying it was a time of life when I was taught the difference between right and wrong as it specifically applied to Catholicism.

Well, I think that Catholicism's basic foundation of faith is personal conscience. I think it's between you and God, not you and the Church.

I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.

Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.

Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.

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

I had a born-again experience at the age of 33. As a result of that I found a church where I felt I was being fed properly. I don't say that as a reflection on Catholicism. But once I was born again, I got an evangelical spirit.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

When she was younger, my mother was quite committed to Roman Catholicism. But she got disillusioned with it and moved closer to something like Buddhist beliefs near the end of her life.

I can't bear Catholicism.

I'm doing a little consulting. I'm somewhat retired, still a director of a company or two.

Take the tone of the company you are in.

So I decided to form a production company with my wife and our partner Diane.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

This kid's excited because he's with Bad Company and I'm excited because I'm with Chuck Berrys' son.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would've existed.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.

That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.

Our loss was very heavy, especially in the officers. Capt. Sale, of Co. E, Duke's regt, was among the killed, making the third Capt. that has been killed in that company.