Quote #12

'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.'

More from Helen Garner

  1. 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 wit…
  2. On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along th…
  3. '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…
  4. '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? Th…
  5. And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvr…
  6. Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.
  7. 'In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.'
  8. 'Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.'

All Helen Garner quotes