Ruth Park

“He who climbs a cliff may die on the cliff, so what? Always a risk-taker by nature, now I became one by intent.”

“Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be.”

“And when he got home he started on Mumma. He hated her then, because in her fatness and untidiness and drabness she reminded him of what he himself was when he was sober.”

“The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.”

“In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back in. This was not a spectacular event. The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew.”

“[a]nd the Pig Man came in from Waitomo and swore that if Louisa didn't marry him he'd damn well vote Labour at the next ele”

“Then she said, with piteous defiance, "If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.”

“What has being a girl to do with anything if a person in properly qualified?' ... 'It's what you call prejudice,' she said.”

“The announcer, in milky tones, rolled out the commercial; it was all about some sort of washing powder that made laundry days a mere frolic in the backyard”