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d40fb6a
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It's how I fill the time when nothing's happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.
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time
loneliness
sadness
melancholy
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Tim Winton |
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c95e93f
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It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.
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Tim Winton |
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2bc1d28
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I liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.
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Tim Winton |
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2cabb89
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When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.
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Tim Winton |
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9d22ad6
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the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.
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past
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Tim Winton |
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0434579
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And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.
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Tim Winton |
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e824dff
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Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.
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tim-winton
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Tim Winton |
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761db84
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We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.
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Tim Winton |
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b558e80
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Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.
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slants-of-light
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Tim Winton |
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3d82d28
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Everything was normal and right. There were dishes in the sink and the sound of kids playing in the street and the trains passing smutty wind. Something had settled over the kitchen. Rose kept the colours inside the lines and all the patterns were proper, sensible and neat. Happiness. That's what it was.
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Tim Winton |
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9bcd0fd
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Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.
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Tim Winton |
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23e0c24
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Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers
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Tim Winton |
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519afae
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He was free and unencumbered. Which is to say alone and unemployed.
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Tim Winton |
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1e99077
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I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.
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Tim Winton |
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8e79f8d
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I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have
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Tim Winton |
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6c78a22
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That was the simple objective, being airborne, up longer, up higher, more casually & with more fuck off elegance than anyone else in the world. I never understood the rules or the science of it but I recognized the single-mindedness it took to match risk with nerve come what may. Some endeavours require a kind of egotism, a near autistic narrowness. Everything conspires against you - the habits of physics, the impulse to flee - & you're wei..
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Tim Winton |
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422b7d0
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Keep the day ahead of you, that's what the old man used to say.
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Tim Winton |
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0a0a631
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The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of kids fighting bath time. Lester comes down, waving his hands. Don't drown the pig, Fish. We're saving him for Christmas! We're gonna eat him. No! I'll drink to that, says the pig. Lester stands there. He looks at Fish. He looks at the porker. ..
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life
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Tim Winton |
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06e36de
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Inside those waves our voices bounced back at us, deeper and larger for all the noise, like the voices of men.
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Tim Winton |
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ab79318
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Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.
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Tim Winton |
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89dd1eb
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And somehow, somewhere along the track, I went numb. I couldn't say what it was & didn't dare try. How do you explain the sense of being made to feel improper ? I withdrew into a watchful rectitude, anxious to please, risking nothing. I followed the outline of my life, carefully rehearsing form without conviction, like a bishop who can't see that his faith has become an act.
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Tim Winton |
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0a39349
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Everyone will tell you your goal is impossible, pointless, stupid, wasteful. So you hang tough. You back yourslef and only yourself.
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tim winton |
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12766c3
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And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.
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life
reflection
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Tim Winton |
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52501b6
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The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw w..
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hunchback-of-notre-dame
tour
view
perspective
hidden
paris
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Tim Winton |
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0c97c50
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So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick. No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there's no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.
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human-nature
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Tim Winton |
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0b26d5e
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That eye... was like a fuckin hole in the universe
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Tim Winton |
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e380ac7
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Hoping is what people do when they're too lazy to do anything else. People
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Tim Winton |
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099651a
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I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living
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Tim Winton |
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24fdfb5
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There's a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind.
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Tim Winton |
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44f35c3
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But I spose the women and the children was the closest. There's something about the men just stops them being able.
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Tim Winton |
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2d990ef
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The gospel of perpetual economic growth carries in its train the salvation promise of a life bigger and better for everyone. But this greater good is often mythical. The actual experience of believers rarely bear out the claims of their faith. Even so, many adherents cleave stubbornly, fearfully to orthodoxy. I guess it's what they know.
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economic-growth
promise
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Tim Winton |
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050b492
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Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.
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Tim Winton - Cloudstreet |
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27cf646
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You can hide in someone else's rage - it blinds them
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tim winton |
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1948422
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And I wish I could say I stayed up late thinking about him but the truth is I was only awake a little while. I was so tired the swag felt like a sponge that soaked me up. I went to sleep like someone disappearing from the earth, like rain sopped into dust.
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Tim Winton |
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1e3373b
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Thinks the sun shines out yer clacker.
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Tim Winton |
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079ac35
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past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? Perhaps it's not childish nonsense to see stones as men walking, to behold the moon and feel a tinge of dread. A stone is a fact, a consequence. And the moon, it marks a man's days, does it not? Another month gone, a reminder every cycle that your moment is waning. No wonder it catch..
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Tim Winton |
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0096331
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Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity."
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tim-winton
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Tim Winton |
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5e38d20
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I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.
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Tim Winton |
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156c1b0
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It's how I fill the time when nothing's happening, thinking too much, flirting with melancholy
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Tim Winton |
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790b7ac
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She wondered if you could love someone too much. If you could it wasn't fair. People didn't have a chance. Love was all you had in the end. It was like sleep, like clean water. When you fell off the world there was still love because love made the world. That's what she believed. That's how it was.
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Tim Winton |
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0858b89
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Time doesn't click on and on at the stroke. It comes and goes in waves and folds like water; it flutters and sifts like dust, rises, billows, falls back on itself. When a wave breaks, the water is not moving. The swell has traveled great distances but only the energy is moving, not the waves. Perhaps time moves through us and not through it.
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Tim Winton |
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4dac6cf
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the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.
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Tim Winton |
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2fcd486
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On our hunger to control and know everything humans break and spoil
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Tim Winton |
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493ab40
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Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it's the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don't even know you got.
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genetics
disease
incest
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Tim Winton |