Silver Bay Quotes
"What you can't see is that he is held up by two wires, supported by my father and his business partner Mr Brent Newhaven – hauling it ashore had ripped several tendons in my right shoulder and by the time the photographer arrived I couldn’t lift a mug of tea, let alone a shark."
"I don’t much care for killing things any more."
"But I still hold that record. I tell you that not out of any desire to boast, or because I’m a seventy-six-year-old woman and it’s nice to feel I once did something of note, but because when you’re surrounded by as many secrets as I am, it feels good to get things straight out in the open occasionally."
"Perhaps my pleasure was made greater by the knowledge that what I was doing was against the rules."
"I had only once seen a whale, with my aunt Kathleen. Usually I wasn’t allowed this far out to sea."
"You’re saying the tourists being sick on Greg’s boat is down to chaos theory?"
"There was magic in the first whale sighting of the migration season."
"I had always felt comforted by the uniformity, the shared sense of purpose."
"There were few days when the crews wouldn’t share a beer or two before they headed home."
"But it’s obvious you’re bucking against something."
"You’d never have known he was drinking that much."
"I was going to have to work like a bloody dog to pay the kind of settlement that that ex of mine was demanding."
"It wasn’t me who, three or four times a year, would be all over her like a rash and the next day act as if I was something she’d picked up on the back of her shoe."
"I know when I’m guilty, and I also know that sometimes it simply isn’t my fault."
"It's hard to believe now, given the size of our land, but whaling was once one of Australia’s primary industries."
"The Aussies got wise in the end and caught their own."
"Back then the whalers mainly hunted the southern right whale – they called it ‘right’ because it was so darn easy to catch."
"They’re protected now, of course, what remains of them."
"The area sank back slowly into shabby solitude, and most of us were relieved."
"There’s a lesson in there for us all. But I’m darned if anyone’s listening."
"The seafront is made up of two half-bays. One, at the northernmost point, is virtually undeveloped."
"It’s not the usual things – the weather, the light, or the wide-open spaces – although they’re a bonus."
"When I tell people I work in finance, they usually think it's boring."
"People hear what they want to hear. And I’ve never yet met a man who didn’t think he could turn the world on its axis if he wanted something badly enough."
"It's just been difficult here . . . I've been so locked into work that I've deliberately not thought about anything to do with home."
"I guess it's such a small place that it's impossible not to. Get to know the people, I mean."
"There's pods of them that have lived in this bay thirty, forty years."
"He’s not sick. It’s just those bloody boats."
"Don’t let him die alone. We can take him out to be close to her."
"I'm sorry, guys, but he's not going anywhere."
"Don’t use her to try to get close to me, because it won’t work."
"I'm doing it because Hannah is an exceptionally nice kid and I need some jobs done."
"It's like, because I'm young, my feelings don’t matter."
"I don’t get drunk to go to bed with you, I get drunk to forget."
"I’m just careful. These days I’m just careful."
"It might boost the winter trade, but at what cost?"
"How can we afford to live in a hotel with no customers?"
"You know what? I don’t really give a fig about the hotel."
"You can’t protect people from progress. You know that."
"This is effing ridiculous. You can’t ruin a bloody good career for a few fish."
"Then for once in your life, Mikey boy, you’re going to have to work at it."
"Despite my feelings for Liza, I was still the duplicitous pig she had identified."
"I heard Hannah’s, with the clarity of a silver bell: ‘Mike, why did you lie to us?’"
"I discovered before the end of the first in-flight movie that I had no idea what I was doing."
"I drank a lot on the flight, partly because it was the only way I could relax."
"The only time I saw my mother cry was when she threw a cherished porcelain shepherdess at my father’s head."
"He had agreed to restore the house to a condition it had not known for several decades."
"My parents were still together. The shepherdess, painfully glued together, was still on the mantelpiece."
"I held it for a minute, feeling winded to have her little note in my hands."
"The owner, a large man in a grubby apron, was staring at me."
"I had run it several times in less than ten minutes. Normally it would have taken twenty to walk."
"I thought you might be proud of it. Shows how little you know."
"I’m not going to be the Shark Lady again. I have enough on my plate without stirring all that up."
"‘It’s the only way to stop the development,’ Mike said."
"Don’t you dare tell me what I should be doing for the whales."
"I can’t do more than I already am doing – but you have to cut me a little slack."
"It sounds stupid, but it was only now that I realised she was not talking about reading the small print."
"I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for everything. I’ve got to go."
"‘I’m so sorry, Ness.’ There was another silence."
"‘You get them?’ I said, when Hannah came in."
"‘I don’t want to say anything to be proud of,’ I muttered."
"‘I don’t care about the boat.’ Liza’s face was pressed to her daughter’s."
"‘I’ve got to get her out!’ Hannah was screaming."
"‘Hannah, we’ve got to get to the boat!’ I shouted."
"‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for bringing my daughter back to me.’"
"Sometimes good things happen if we have faith."
"You think this old fellow worried about statistics?"
"I’ll give it a go. I really will give it a go."
"I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s madness."
"She’s not making it up. Do you think it would be a story?"
"She’s alive, sweetheart. God save us, she’s alive."
"I knew she couldn’t be dead, not like the sea creatures. She never felt dead."
"How can they have kept the truth from her for all those years?"
"Sometimes, a lie is the way of least pain for everyone."
"If a shark wants to bite you, as far as I’m concerned, you do whatever the hell you have to just to stay alive."
"For once in your life, you’ve done a good thing."
"What the hell does he know? What does any of us know? Stranger things have happened, especially in our little corner of the world."