2f99300
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Shanksing across that country you stick out like a rat on a birthday cake.
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Tim Winton |
3fc4b88
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I meant to slip away, he said, busking it now.
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Tim Winton |
fe50c93
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You look great, he said. Oh, get fucked, she said, grinning.
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Tim Winton |
5141948
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Dogs get howling all down the way. 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 in the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.
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Tim Winton |
353f7d8
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I couldn't take my eyes from those plumes of spray, the churning shards of light. Was this what the old man was afraid of? I tried to think of poor dead Snowy Muir but death was hard to imagine when you had these blokes dancing themselves across the bay with smiles on their faces and sun in their hair. I couldn't have put words to it as a boy, but later I understood what seized my imagination that day. How strange it was to see men do somet..
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Tim Winton |
41c5825
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You've been busy, he said. Want something done, ask a busy person.
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Tim Winton |
2cc6d24
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He'd worn himself ragged with second-guessing until his head felt like a tinful of bees.
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Tim Winton |
e9a3461
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Wasted and wounded It ain't what the moon did I got what I paid for now See you tomorrow Hey Frank can I borrow A couple of bucks from you To go Waltzing Matilda Waltzing Matilda You'll go waltzing Matilda with me . . .
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Tim Winton |
cc0225c
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Keely's pulse quickened. A stab of apprehension. He was the same at any live performance, suddenly anxious for the players. So stupid; these people were professional muscicians. But the way his throat narrowed they could have all been kds at a school recital. His kids.
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Tim Winton |
43ef9d8
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And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light.
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imagination
perspective
sunlight
innocence
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Tim Winton |
232f3a7
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She was still glad she looked like Scully. He wasn't pretty either, but pretty people weren't the kind you need. Pretty people saw themselves in the mirror and were either too happy or too sad. People like Billie just shrugged and didn't care. She didn't want to turn into anyone pretty. Anyway, she had scars now, you only had to look.
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attitude
vainity
perspective
pretty
children
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Tim Winton |
8fa5111
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There's things that have no finish, Scully, no ending to speak of. There's no justice to it, but that's the God's truth. The only end some things have is the end you give em.
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heartbreak
foreshadowing
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Tim Winton |
65928b2
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Here, said the nuggety bald fixture. You look dry as a camel's cookie.
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Tim Winton |
8f61a44
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Rare as rocking-horse turds, these days, feeling halfway to decent, with barely a sick twinge, and he was damned if he'd waste
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Tim Winton |
9bdbad6
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Old Scully, who according to Jennifer, hadn't the imagination to think the worst. Something she said once, as though neurosis was an artform.
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thoughts
mindset
neurosis
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Tim Winton |
00eaf66
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She wants to be something creative,' he murmured. 'It's not something to want. It's something you have. It's a curse. One she doesn't have.
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Tim Winton |
b9de811
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In Europe, the dimensions of physical space seemed compressed. The looming vertical presence of mountains cut me off from the horizon. I'd not lived with that kind of spatial curtailment before. Even a city of skyscrapers is more porous than a snowcapped range. Alps form a solid barrier, an obstacle every bit as conceptual as visual and physical. Alpine bluffs and crags just don't rear up, they lean outwards, projecting their mass, and thei..
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geography-and-culture
australian-literature
home
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Tim Winton |
410d7c4
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Glamour-hounds and donor-hogs they may be but he loved them.
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Tim Winton |
b6df178
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Few landscapes have been so deeply known. And fewer still have been so lightly inhabited.
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australian-literature
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Tim Winton |
6b7ddfd
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I invested them with a bogus nobility. To a suburban kid they seemed so special, enduring, wild and stiff-necked, in amongst the ancient rocks and gnarled trees, and while it was true enough they carried their secret places in their bodies and in their language, many simply wore their ordinary, dreary undigested pasts like rain-sodden greatcoats and lived like cripples.
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Tim Winton |
86176b9
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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.
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Tim Winton |
fc87651
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Every vegetable, every bit of protein on the list had a provenance more complex than a minor Rembrandt.
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Tim Winton |
0cf446b
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They probably don't understand this, but it's important for me to show them that their father is a man who dances - who saves lives and carries the wounded, yes, but who also does something completely pointless and beautiful, and in this at least he should need no explanation.
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Tim Winton |
85b3a6d
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out there houses are rare as rocking horse turds.
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Tim Winton |
66218a6
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To live you gotta be hard, I know that. But nobody wants to be a deadset cunt. That's just not fucking decent.
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misogeny
sexism
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Tim Winton |
8aa201d
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Everything imaginable had been done or tried out there. It wasn't the feeling you had looking out on his own land. In Australia, you looked out and saw the possible, the spaces, the maybes...
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australian-literature
possibility
possibilities
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Tim Winton |
b5c073c
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architecture was what you had instead of landscape, a signal of loss, of imitation. Europe had it in spades...
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loss
australian-literature
landscape
cities
europe
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Tim Winton |
660a19c
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She was like a sheet anchor sometimes, a steadying influence on him, on everyone around her. Made people laugh, that sensible streak in her, but it also made her someone of substance.
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good-influence
person-of-character
person-of-substance
sensible-person
sensible
personality-types
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Tim Winton |
2216b06
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It's a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted. Getting seen deep and proper, it's shit hot but terrible too. It's like being took over. And your whole skin hurts like you suddenly grew two sizes in a minute.
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indiscretion
shyness
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Tim Winton |
33491e5
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This land looks dreamt, willed, potent.
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Tim Winton |
66eb6d7
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Me? I belong to Jesus Christ. Like it or not. They wet you and get you. Anyway. No other bastard will have me.
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Tim Winton |
e2755c5
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The only end some things have is the end you give em.
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ends
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Tim Winton |
0f13eb1
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jedoch spurt man auf ziemlich perverse Art, dass man dem Leben an sich ausgeliefert ist, weil es einen zwingt, zu atmen und zu atmen und zu atmen in einer endlosen Kapitulation vor der biologischen Routine, und dass das menschliche Streben nach Kontrolle ebenso viel mit der Machtergreifung uber den eigenen Korper zu tun hat wie mit der Ausubung von Macht uber andere.
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Tim Winton |
aa5348d
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is bitter. She declaims into his face: And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
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Tim Winton |
53fdae1
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wash the black mud from my hands. On a light given off by the grave I kneel in the quick of the moon At the heart of a distant forest And hold in my arms a child Of water, water, water.
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Tim Winton |
498de85
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After all, there's no shape or image in modern culture to match that of the gun. Nothing else has its universal authority or saving promise
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Tim Winton |
0449aa2
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radiates.
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Tim Winton |
9dcdaba
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The gun's slinky power has a special appeal to the young, the weak, the confused and the powerless. To those overlooked or spurned, access to a firearm is the spark of agency. With a gun in your hands, everything is possible. In a moment you imagine the respect it demands.
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Tim Winton |
63a50a0
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Purnululu,
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Tim Winton |
cbc2879
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firearm would be a dark presence I can do without under my own roof. Too much sinister potential. Too much unearnt power.
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Tim Winton |
85d21ea
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I will always remember my first wave this morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing to air. How the wave drew me forward and I sprang to my feet, skating with the wind of momentum in my ears. I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light. I remember the ..
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Tim Winton |
2ef91f7
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Fox grins. Go strides to the rear of the Ford. His manner never alters. The Vietnamese has purposeful intensity down pat.
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Tim Winton |
7d24e85
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Whatever it was went through me like a rifle rag. Come dawn, me date was so hot you could have lit a sparkplug off of it.
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simile
vernacular
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Tim Winton |
391d03c
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When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything's hell different. Like I'm in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy. Even with the engine working up a howl and the wind flogging in the window the sounds are real soft and pillowy. Civilized I mean. Like you're still on the earth but you don't hardly notice it anymore. And that's hectic. You'd think I never got in a car before. But when you've hoofed i..
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god
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Tim Winton |