Helen Garner quotes - page 2

Revolution begins in the kitchen. (Helen Garner)
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.
Helen Garner
Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff.
Helen Garner
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.
Helen Garner
The devil's everywhere,' he said. 'Not just at Brunswick one day and somewhere else the next. He's everywhere.
Helen Garner
I tell you one thing that makes me feel I haven't wasted my life, and that is I've got some grandchildren. You can't overestimate the kind of opening to the future that gives a person, I think.
Helen Garner
That's the best thing that's ever happened to me, bar none, is having grandchildren and living by them and being part of their lives.
Helen Garner
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.
Helen Garner
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.
Helen Garner
Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.
Helen Garner