I suspect I only really liked her because she liked me first. - Tim Winton

Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That's what dead things are.

Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes.

Why was it that he didn't know a thing about the underlying nature of people, the shadows and shifts, the hungers and hopes that caused them to do the things they did?