"'He claims,' said Jenny tactfully, 'That he flew through a radioactive cloud thirty years ago and that it didn't do him any harm - thus it's all right to mine uranium. A fine piece of Australian political reasoning.'"

"'What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed."

"'Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen."

"Revolution begins in the kitchen."

"'In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.'"

"'Course I care. I always care. But there's no point in making a song and dance about it, like that night he stayed here. Know something? There's only one thing that'll bring 'em back, and that's indifference. The one thing you can't fake.'"

"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."

"'That,' I said, 'would be a blessing. There are so many things I'd like to forget I hardly know what would be left standing, if I ever got started.'"

"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"

"'It's rather like a Poe story, isn't 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."

"'Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.'"

"'The devil's everywhere,' he said. 'Not just at Brunswick one day and somewhere else the next. He's everywhere.'"

"The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall."

"Out in deep space the planets sweep, inexorable, along their splendid orbits. Maxine bowed her head. From now on she would take the gods' dictation."

"Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff."