Dirt Music Quotes
"World without consequence, amen. And in it she felt light as an angel."
"You had to admit that it was nice to be without a body for a while; there was an addictive thrill in being of no age, no gender, with no past."
"Sailor, diver and angler though she was, Georgie knew that these days the glories of the outdoors were wasted on her."
"Inherited, so everybody said. By the time he was out of the lagoon and through the passage in the reef with the bird-swirling island on his starboard beam, the whole bay would be burbling with diesels and the others would be looking for the dying phosphor of his wake."
"The magic ain’t real, darlin, but when it’s gone it’s over."
"Even after the boom when many families became instantly—even catastrophically— rich and the law came to town, they were, in any estimation, as rough as guts."
"Jim loved to fish but he wanted his sons to do something else."
"It’s never about the environment, he says hotly. Fisheries law is about protecting all that export money."
"It didn’t feel reckless or even gross. It left her peaceful."
"You put up a tent to make a space you can deal with. You know the whole night’s still out there—the land, the sky and every creeping thing—and you understand how thin the fabric is, what a pissy pretence you hold to, but with your tent blown open you feel more exposed than if you’d lain down on your mat beneath the stars. You can’t see what’s coming."
"Privacy. Privacy. Sooner or later your secrets are all you have."
"But what’s the point? Privacy. Privacy. Sooner or later your secrets are all you have."
"I didn’t tell you. About Bird. That she lived for a while. On machines. They kept shovin all these forms into my hands. I wasn’t gonna do it. I stayed and stayed. Think I just got tired, you know. They wore me down."
"It’s a human thing, Derek. You wouldn’t understand."
"All you ever wanted was to show her what you did best, to have her understand something about you. And to prove that you could love her. In a quiet room, alone. Before the essence of her was gone. Before your heart finally shrank to the size of a dried fig."
"You ever have that dream, he said, when you were a kid, that everyone’s got back in the car and driven off and forgotten you?"
"The old man didn’t care for books that couldn’t show you how to fix an engine or save your soul. Bumfluff, he called it."
"She remembered the party at Gilligan’s, one of those rare occasions when she’d bothered. The keg hissing on the verandah. The groom’s father rolling his eyes at the endless delay. The band, the bloody band."
"You’ve been talking to Ann, she said standing at the window while he sat on her narrow bed with its dire pink coverlet."
"The suitcase with its sticker scabs, the rucksack and crates of souvenirs and knick-knacks."
"Sitting here by the pool as though you already own it."
"I’m trying to tell you, he hissed. I didn’t do it."
"I’m busting my nuts to be reasonable, Georgie."
"I think I’m quite within my rights in not being prepared to beg, though, he said."
"That bell drones on and on, trapping him beneath a sky and a moon of his very own, on his knees, like the last man alive hearing the sound of the others lilting off into oblivion."
"That summer Georgie’s nervous cooking jag became a feverish binge, as though she was trying to cook her way out of uncertainty."
"A British woman desperate to be a mother. The miracle of fertility drugs. She is blessed with IVF triplets. And puts two children out for adoption."
"Georgie STARED at Jude’s email. Men are killing us, sis."
"By the time the boys figured out who it was swimming toward them from the shore, their puzzlement had given way to alarm, as though her being abroad in daylight and encroaching upon their territory were cause for concern."
"If I lose the flower of England I shall lose the branch too."
"It’s nearly beer o’clock, said Red. And I have to catch your dinner on the way home."
"Jesus, he could be bloody anywhere, said Jim."
"That didn’t make a lick of sense to me, said Georgie with a self-conscious laugh."
"I figure I’m just doin my bit for the nation, you know?"
"All three of them laughed and Jim’s prickliness subsided minute by minute."
"Music wants to be heard. Feeling wants to be felt."
"It’s as though his mind can only settle when he’s still."
"But as he reaches for it he gets a glimpse of himself in the shaving mirror and stops dead."