Cloudstreet Quotes
"Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water’s edge."
"He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life."
"It’s low tide so he reaches the steps to the jetty without even wetting his shoes, though he would have waded there if need be, because he’s hungry for the water, he wants it more than ever."
"A great, gobbling laugh pours out of him. No hand in his trouser belt. The water to himself. The silver-skinned river."
"Within a minute he’ll have it, and it’ll have him, and for a few seconds he’ll truly be a man."
"Rose Pickles knew something bad was going to happen. Something really bad, this time."
"She wasn’t vain, but it stuck in her guts, having someone telling you that every day of your life."
"And you can’t help but worry for them, love them, want for them—those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you."
"Her two brothers will be here soon. She goes out and waits on the fire escape."
"She feels tough all of a sudden, and grown up."
"The boys can find their own way, she thinks, they can all find their own way."
"The bay, the pub, the Norfolk pines, the endless summer wind. No one cried; no one was game to."
"It was evening when they reached the city and they caught the first taxi of their lives, to Cloud Street."
"With all the upper floor lights on, Rose walked through drifts of dust, webs and smells from room to room."
"It was a big, sad, two-storey affair in a garden full of fruit trees."
"She loved books, even to hold them and turn them over in her hands and smell the cool, murky breeze they made when you birred the pages fast through your fingers."
"Rain fell sweetly on the corrugated iron roof all morning."
"He just sets his teeth and holds onto himself and knows he doesn’t deserve what he’s got."
"You’re white as a ghost, she says, moving back."
"Their name was gone off the old kero tin letterbox."
"You can’t stay in a town when everything blows up in your face—especially the only miracle that ever happened to you."
"The knife never lies, you know, it always knows best."
"Dolly Pickles left it till the last seconds of closing hour before she scratched on a bit of lipstick and went downstairs to see for herself."
"The house on Cloud Street took on a wonky aspect."
"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."
"He was a waistcoat and watch chain type and he spoke like the pommy officers Lester remembered from his days in the Light Horse."
"This boy seems traumatized. There’s nothing physically wrong with him."
"We thought he was better, said Lester. A miracle, you know."
"Oriel picked Fish up in a swoop. There’s no home as specialized as mine, Mister!"
"Lester barrelled into the kids’ room. No school today! VE Day."
"But he forgets so much. He doesn’t remember being a real flamin character."
"Quick Lamb was surprised when his father joined the army."
"Music seems to make him feel good. Music and spinning things."
"A winner like that had the weight of the whole bloody universe behind it."
"All she needed was summer, and some sweet, healing, nipplepricking sun."
"You look like you lost a penny and found a quid."
"Sam started after her and she ran giggling through the door into the rangy mob of kids outside."
"Rose stood in the yard and looked back at him and it didn’t seem so strange to love him."
"The war’s over, he knows, but he picks up sadness like he’s got radar for it."
"Everythin's easier to believe in when it comes a man's way."
"It's like a light shinin on you. You can feel it."
"I only believe in one thing, Les, Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck."
"It was like having a light shining on you; it suddenly felt like everything was possible and none of it mattered a damn."
"His pockets were bloated with money and he felt a kind of delirium coming on."
"What a bloke needs most is to get what he wants most."
"It was the kind of place you’d rather not be in."
"She could only see a foot or two ahead, but she could feel a mile."
"It only took Dolly’s body a second to decide that it couldn’t go on."
"Oriel Lamb had never seen anybody throw up like Mrs. Pickles was throwing up."
"Summer came whirling out of the night and stuck fast."
"As the days cannoned on, and the heat got meaner, everybody did things crazier than normal."
"Red Lamb the tomboy got sick of blokes swimming under the girls’ change sheds at the Crawley baths."
"Everything in the world seemed to happen just before Christmas."
"The pig is pink and hairy with smart little eyes and a nose like a wet light plug."
"The cockatoo bit Chub on the lip, got a taste for it and began an offensive that lasted all week."
"Rose Pickles read Jane Eyre and decided never to give it back to the public library."
"The river was broad and silvertopped and he knew its topography well enough to be out at night."
"After one class Krasnostein kept Quick behind."
"Here were all those words like sin and corruption and damnation."
"No Quick. He’s gone. He didn’t say. You should say. A boy should say."
"Oriel Lamb, being the sort of woman who resolved to do things, decided to make a recovery."
"But in her bed that night Oriel lay awake thinking of the pig her father had butchered to heal her burns as a sign of his love and it troubled her sorely."
"He was after her, this one, and all the weights of boredom, the trying, the pushing out smiles were gone, and she had a happy, dark world to live in."
"It was a wonder that it could happen, that a mother could turn like that from loving to hating."
"They have to be blotted out. Rose was the enemy."
"She saw him nearly every night of the week, and though she didn’t much think about him during the day, if she got stuck in the same room as Rose, that filthy-pretty skeleton, she’d bring him to mind to fight the sight of her off."
"Sam didn’t mind the Mint work so much. It cheered him up to be around the money and he wouldn’t pretend it was otherwise."
"To be alive, to be feeling, to be conscious. It was the cruellest bloody joke."
"You have to start eatin again. It’s not a joke anymore, love."
"I’m sixteen and I don’t eat and I fall down dizzy twice a day and now I’m pulled outta school. Oh, I’m the one."
"No, you have to be your luck. There’s nothin else, there’s just you."
"But she’s up and running for the door with it all ramming upwards in her before she can even think about it."
"She races out and stumps downstairs, sick and hurting."
"The whole place filled with the stink of melting and burning, the thump of the presses and the whang of steel gates."
"Eat it, he says. I’m not havin you starve to death in my own house."
"She spears a snag and bites it in half, chews recklessly and feels it slip down greasy and fine tasting."
"Across the planes all things still play themselves out, all fun and fear, all the silliness and quaking effort, all the bickering and twitching, all the people going about the relentless limited endeavour of human business."
"They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them. They were the grousest ladies she’d ever met."
"On pay day she gave the old man half her pay and he laughed and gave it back."
"It disgusted Red, who imagined them smooching in that FJ down by the river."
"Oriel could spot weakness and need a mile off."
"Hell is when you’re dragged out past the black bones and belt buckles that are the others who never came down."
"She was a sinner, she knew, and proud, and angry at God to the point of hatred."
"And then comes autumn, and behind it, winter when everything happens without anyone expecting it."
"He didn’t mind being lonely; he was used to being sad, but he didn’t want to baulk at shadows for the rest of his life."
"You could see it in the way he unlatched the tailgate as pigs pressed against it squealing, how he took his time at the weigh-bridge, how conscientiously he waved cars by him as he hugged the soft edges on narrow roads."
"He thought he was coping, but he was miserable, lost, drifting, tired and homesick as a dog."
"Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me, a bit of his brain said, Thy rod and Thy staff…"
"Now the wheels snicking along the tracks were all he heard as he dragged on the wheel and veered across the road to the other side where dirt lay in piles at the edge of the tracks."
"He was bogged under nine ton of super and he could feel the paddock subsiding beneath him."
"The boat sat well in the water, evenly hipped and clean painted. In their rowlocks, the oars knocked and creaked with business."
"He felt them slide across his chest as his head sank into them, against his cheeks, along his lips with the briny taste of Lucy Wentworth’s business bits."
"The floors rumble across the way. It’s a non-opening Saturday today. The Lambs are killing the pig, that’s for sure."
"Rose Pickles, freshly showered and peering at the steamy mirror, pens on the Dawn Heat lipstick with plenty of speed and nerve."
"Out in the garden, the pig is muttering in tongues: Gwalia logoreemi muluth dooloomoos speptie…"
"You believe in what you like, Lester Lamb. That’s one thing I can’t show you."
"We make good, Lester. We make war on the bad and don’t surrender."
"He looked old and exhausted, damn silly with his hair all on end and his lardspattered specs up on his brow."
"She sits and faces him. He can’t remember seeing her nervous like this; it takes the crustiness from her features so that she looks younger, more pretty than voluptuous."
"I've been waiting all my life for everything."