I thank all of those who weren't born in this country for coming here and making a contribution to Australia. We are the least discriminatory country in the world, in my view.

The goal of Australian foreign policy should be to promote the maximum harmony between the U.S. and China.

It's too much to expect in an academic setting that we should all agree, but it is not too much to expect discipline and unvarying civility.

I don't think there's any reason on Earth why people should have access to automatic and semiautomatic weapons unless they're in the military or in the police.

Autobiography should be more stringent. It should adhere more to the standards of journalism - assuming that journalism has the truth. The memoir gives you more scope, is more poetic, and allows you to play around with your own life.

He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.

I'm exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times. My experience is, 'Oh, I'm never really going to get it right. I'm never going to get it done. But that's not the point here.' The point is the journey.

One of the things you'll discover... as you listen to your own soul is that you spend a great amount of your life trying to bring meaning to your own life. And, by the way, most people are not going to church, so the place they're actually trying to find meaning in their life is at work.