“Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable…unimaginable…unspeakable.”

“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

“Culture made the use of the F-bomb on television unthinkable in 1965; 40 years later, HBO would be lost without it.”

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”

“For you can't hear Irish tunes without knowing you're Irish, and wanting to pound that fact into the floor.”

“The convict system in essence was a form of compulsory, assisted migration. It eased the problems created by Australia's distance from Britain. Without it relatively few people from the British Isles would have made the costly journey across the world in Australia's first half century.”

“It would be unthinkably bad luck to be betrayed by a rumbling stomach.”

“In Australia the pressure of the Scots and especially of the Irish forced the abandonment of 'English' as the identity of the colonies in favour of 'British'. The Irish of course could still bridle at a British identity even when it included them as equals. In time, with the passing of the first generation born in Ireland and the growth of a distinctively Australian interpretation of Britishness, they were prepared to accept it.”

“Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”

“Imagine the unimaginable… What would the world look like if America did not exist?”