21 Helen Garner Quotes

Helen Garner offers sharp, witty observations that tease out politics and personality with a dry, clever edge.

'He claims,' said Jenny tactfully, 'That he flew through a radioactive cloud thirty years ago and that it didn't do him any harm - thus it's all right to mine uranium. A fine piece of Australian political reasoning.'
#1
'What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed.
#2
Page 21.
#3
'Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen.
#4
Page 26.
#5
Revolution begins in the kitchen.
#6
'In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.'
#7
Page 123.
#8
'Course I care. I always care. But there's no point in making a song and dance about it, like that night he stayed here. Know something? There's only one thing that'll bring 'em back, and that's indifference. The one thing you can't fake.'
#9
Page 80.
#10
Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.
#11
'That,' I said, 'would be a blessing. There are so many things I'd like to forget I hardly know what would be left standing, if I ever got started.'
#12
On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along the avenue their patient chime, the chattering of their wheels
#13
'It's rather like a Poe story, isn't it,' said Patrick luxuriously, unfocusing his eyes. 'A person sees the chance of a better life passing by, and he makes as if to call out' - he flung one arm in the imploring gesture of a soul in torment - 'but something in his nature makes him hesitate. He pauses ... he closes his lips ... he steps back ... and then he slides down, and down, and down.'
#14
And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.
#15
Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.
#16
'Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.'
#17
'The devil's everywhere,' he said. 'Not just at Brunswick one day and somewhere else the next. He's everywhere.'
#18
The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.
#19
Out in deep space the planets sweep, inexorable, along their splendid orbits. Maxine bowed her head. From now on she would take the gods' dictation.
#20
Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff.
#21

Helen Garner quotes