And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.
When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.
I will always remember my first wave this morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing to air. How the wave drew me forward and...
Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity.
So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's...
I meant to slip away, he said, busking it now.
He was free and unencumbered. Which is to say alone and unemployed.
The past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.
Purnululu,
Me? I belong to Jesus Christ. Like it or not. They wet you and get you. Anyway. No other bastard will have me.
Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.
Jesus, I told meself, harden the fuck up. She heard me say that once, Mum. To me little cousin out by the laundry where he was bawling, his knee bleeding a tiny bit. She had that disgusted look on her...
God is what you do, not what you believe in.
Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.
The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of...
Say I hit your number, called you up, you’d wonder what the fuck, every one of youse, and your mouth’d go dry. Maybe you’re just some stranger I pocket-dialled. Or one of them shitheads from school I...
Hoping is what people do when they’re too lazy to do anything else. People
But I spose the women and the children was the closest. There’s something about the men just stops them being able.
Firearm would be a dark presence I can do without under my own roof. Too much sinister potential. Too much unearnt power.
You look great, he said. Oh, get fucked, she said, grinning.