#helen garner

— scenes pass as if viewed from a train — momentarily, distinct and tantalizing in their beauty —

'If a full-bore jury trial is a symphony, a plea hearing is a string quartet. Its purpose seems to be to clear a space in which the quality of mercy might at least be contemplated. There is something moving in its quiet thoughtfulness, the intensity of its focus, the murmuring voices of judge and counsel, the absence of melodrama or posturing. It's the law in action, working to fit the dry, clean planes of reason to the jagged edges of human wildness and suffering.'

I saw the graceful angle of her leg and I thought, She’s beautiful and full of grace; she likes me; she does not defer to me, nor does she need to undermine me; she has a private mind and a private life; we are not in competition; her areas of competence are so different from mine that we never clash. I envy—or rather intend to be, one day—a woman like her. Or those older women writers I’ve met, who at sixty live alone in a lovely flat, work calmly and with recognition, have friends.

Romantics are dangerous. They will not give up the privileges of childhood.

I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for [happiness]. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist. Things that remind me of other things. Tiny scenes. Words that people choose, their accidentally biblical turns of phrase. Hand-lettered signs, quotes from books, offhand remarks that make me think of dead people, or of living ones I can no longer stand the sight of. I plan to keep writing them down, praising them, arranging them like stepping stones into the dark. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere good before I shrivel up and blow away.