Any Ordinary Day Quotes
"It’s a daily thought, just the loss of potential and what they could have been."
"The number one lesson that comes out of what happened to me is that you don’t know when things are going to change. Life is not promised today or tomorrow. It can all be gone."
"One of the reasons that somebody like Walter becomes an unwitting celebrity is that the community is morbidly fascinated to see how people cope with something that they couldn’t personally imagine enduring."
"When the community learns of a tragedy like Walter’s, the thought, That could have been me, is quickly replaced by: If that happened to me, I could never survive."
"The more shocking and awful the tragedy, the harder it is for us to process."
"The good news is that communities are generally very resilient. The number of people who feel acute stress is low and recovery is fast."
"Even when things occasionally seemed like they were not going his way, they actually were."
"The other great characteristic of which we have been reminded is our sense of defiance. We will not be deterred from living our lives."
"It is a time of extreme brittleness and any attempt to block spontaneous memorials can transform mass grieving into something angry or toxic."
"Every day we ascribe significance to the most random, meaningless events so as to give ourselves a sense of control over our world."
"The very important thing is that the last thing a prime minister or anybody in a position like public office should do is be diffident or hesitant. You’re only magnifying their grief when you’re meant to be there to help them, not to add to their problems."
"I think you owed it to them to recognise it was their emotions that had to be on display. You had to be sensitive – if you couldn’t talk or offer some kind of physical comfort, you’re not much help to them."
"One of the things I was very conscious of was that different people expect different things in those circumstances. Some of them want a hug, some of them want a handshake. Some of them just want to talk to you, it depends on their personalities."
"I think it’s a combination of the extent to which the death and the circumstances of it find a ready identification in the minds of people in the community."
"People doing a perfectly normal thing, not doing anything wrong, and then out of the blue something like that happens. That has a big impact on people."
"Yes. You don’t do it lightly. I thought all the decisions I took were correct. I don’t regret the decisions, but I do feel the sense of responsibility."
"It’s a combination of persistence, some ability, good fortune. Perhaps an understanding of the character of the Australian people that was better than average for people in politics."
"Wielding that kind of influence is humbling for an author, but it’s particularly serious for a journalist reporting a live national tragedy."
"It’s impossible to fully understand how we react to catastrophes, either individually or communally, without looking at the way the media covers such events and how it influences what we think."
"Journalists do not create the conditions they cover, many recognise that they do receive awards and recognition for telling the public about these calamities and repugnant situations."
"We are using survivors and victims to help the community understand its thoughts and feelings about how the world works, and so, at the very least, we should do as little harm as possible in pursuit of the story."
"There is of course a question about whether there was a legitimate public interest in James Scott’s story or whether it was simply that the public was curious. These are two different things."
"That study, carried out by the Centre for Advanced Journalism at Melbourne University, spoke to twenty-eight journalists who had covered the Black Saturday fires and to twenty-seven survivors they had interviewed."
"As James points out, it’s the media that profits the most from high-profile stories, not the person at the centre of them."
"Like Juliet, everyone who experiences a sudden tragedy must adapt to a new normal, to use Graham Norris’s expression."
"You can’t get them back their old life."
"The great tragedy of Graham’s own story is that this wonderfully wise bloke who was so clearly fantastic at his job is no longer a police officer."
"Like the priest and the detective, some people are blessed with instinctive emotional intelligence."
"Emotional incompetence isn’t limited to individuals, either."
"What if we could institutionalise that type of kindness?"
"Every day, judges and lawyers witness the impact of the legal system on the people who land in it, often through no fault of their own."
"A particularly confronting experience for many bereaved is the autopsy process."
"Once you accept that the pursuit of justice can cause people further pain, how do you apply therapeutic jurisprudence to mitigate that harm as much as possible?"
"Critics of therapeutic jurisprudence do raise valid concerns, especially the potential compromise to the ability of judges to remain impartial once their minds are open to considerations beyond the law."
"The idea that the law can exist in an emotionless vacuum is patently nonsense."
"If citizens see that courts are making an effort to meet the personal needs of those who walk through their doors, then surely it can only build public confidence."
"Three years after Nick Waterlow was murdered, Juliet Darling suffered another truly shattering blow: her 26-year-old son, George, died on a building site in remote bushland."
"Life has forced Juliet to learn to let go too."
"‘With your son dying so soon after Nick, has the grief been different?’ I ask her."
"The pain is similar. My son was so happy and such a joyful person, so much at peace with himself, that he just seemed like he was taken."
"You’ve trusted me by telling me your story,' I say. ‘What do you hope somebody reading it would take away?'"
"‘That in pain, there’s also joy. You can’t be in the presence of just one thought, that life is good, or life is bad, or life is sad. There’s all these things. And there are so many good people in the world, actually, so much kindness. It’s everywhere.’"
"Stuart Diver is not jinxed, although he has undoubtedly been unlucky."
"‘Rescue team working overhead, can anyone hear me?’ one of the men yelled."
"‘The bit that worries me emotionally, if you look at my life, is how much more love do I have to give? Is that a finite resource?’"
"‘My whole life has been unbelievable experiences, whether they’ve resulted in something fantastic or something tragic. I’ve led the most amazing life ever.’"
"It feels as if everything about their story is contained in those grains of sand: the impermanence of life, the swiftness of change."
‘I remember saying endlessly, "We were so happy, I just don’t understand how this could have happened. He was such a good person. There are so many terrible people out in the world and why Matt?" ’
"‘I remember thinking, Why us? Very quickly, I got around to, Why not us? There’s nothing special about us.’"
"Having a witness, someone who was there, who was the person with Matt when he died, was incredibly comforting and helpful to me."
"The formal finding was that Matt died from ‘misadventure’ when the surf swept him against the rocks of a sea cliff."
"I felt this lightness settling on me, which was new. It’s not closure, because I will live with Matt’s death and the pain of it every day."
"My biggest fear now is that I have to go through this again. What’s next?"
"The pain is love. It’s just the manifestation of the sad side of losing someone, as opposed to them being with you."
"I understand now that happiness isn’t some goal that we’re working towards, it’s just in the daily living of life."
"I’m so changed. I’m so different. I feel like I’ve sort of had a layer of skin removed."
"The quest to find purpose in suffering is nothing new; suffering is as old as humanity."
"Posttraumatic growth does not occur instead of grief and pain, it’s simply the accidental by-product."
"What if people don’t return to normal, what if they develop enhanced functioning instead?"
"The random distribution of misfortune is perhaps the only thing in life that is fair."
"I now know what some of those tools are. I believe in the power of ‘being in the moment’."
"Life is much more complicated and beautiful than that."
"The things you think you wouldn’t be able to survive, you probably can. You will be okay."
"To be grateful for the ordinary days and to savour every last moment of them. They’re not so ordinary, really."