In my books I have lifted bits from various religions in trying to come to a better understanding; I've made use of religious themes and symbols. Now… - Patrick White

…stones, even, are smoother for the dust.

She would have liked to love. It was terrible to think she had never loved her son as a man. Sometimes her hands would wrestle together. They were supple, rather plump hands, broad and not yet dry. But wrestling like this together, they were papery and dried-up. Then she would force herself into some deliberate activity or speak tenderly to her good husband, offering him things to eat, and seeing to his clothes. She loved her husband. Even after the drudgery of love she could still love him. But sometimes she lay on her side and said, I have not loved him enough, not yet, he has not seen the evidence of love. It would have been simpler if she had been able to turn and point to the man their son, but she could not.

"I mean one can be so remote in spirit from one's actual father -or mother- it's as though one doesn't belong to them. Spiritually," he dared, "one can be someone else's child."