Boris Pasternak

You couldn't enclose people in institutions or hospitals or almshouses in the way the Victorians managed to do. India was too big. Seeing the suffering people was terrible, but I think I was more distraught at the needless cruelty to so many animals.

A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.

I've been around long enough to not take seriously statements like I am about to be crushed. I'm about how do we seek re-election of the Australian government, how we prevent Tony Abbott from being elected. The bottom line is that it should be all hands to the pump rather than saying other, frankly negative and internally divisive things.