"My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old."
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."
Mother Teresa on Faith"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."
Martin Luther King, Jr. on Faith"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
Martin Luther King, Jr. on Faith"All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired."
Martin Luther on Faith"Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts."
Mahatma Gandhi on Faith"I mean the beauty of being a writer is it's not like being a swimmer. When they were talking about our Olympic swimmers and they'd say, 'Oh she's so old,' and she's all of 25 or something. So the beauty for a writer is that you can keep doing it right into your dotage, and I hope to be able to keep doing it as long as I can get away with it, yeah."
"Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep."
"There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us."
"September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage."
"Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books."