But re-reading Voss also demonstrates again that although White wasn't 'a nice man', and indeed was—perhaps rightly—scathingly dismissive of my and other Australian writers' work and origins unless they were his friends, he was a genius, and Voss one of the finest works of the modernist era and of the past century.

Coitus is random, children are definite.

He was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.

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

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

It was so like old times that Henry found himself smiling down at Olek and Mance, playing to her, capable of ignoring the rest. It did seem for those seconds that the earth had at last been pacified by music.

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.