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

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.

Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.

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