The devils everywhere, he said. Not just at Brunswick one day and some — 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."

"On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along the avenue their patient chime, the chattering of their wheels"

"Its rather like a Poe story, isnt 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."

"And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring."

"Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them."

"Course I care. I always care. But theres no point in making a song and dance about it, like that night he stayed here. Know something? Theres only one thing thatll bring em back, and thats indifference. The one thing you cant fake."