Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own.

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

Write what you know. Every guide for the aspiring author advises this. Because I live in a long-settled rural place, I know certain things. I know the feel of a newborn lamb's damp, tight-curled fleece and the sharp sound a well-bucket chain makes as it scrapes on stone. But more than these material things, I know the feelings that flourish in small communities. And I know other kinds of emotional truths that I believe apply across the centuries.

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.