Cirrus@Austlit

'Some people say ‘West’ like it is something wrong, like ice-cream that fell in a gutter. I think West is like my brother’s music, too much bass so you end up dancing like your body parts don’t fit together and laughing all at the same time. That’s what West is: shiny cars and loud things, people coming, people going – movement. Those who don’t know any better, they come into the neighbourhood and lock their windows and drive on through, never stopping before they get somewhere else.

'These are the first few lines of my second book The Incredible Here and Now. I can’t say that I like them very much. I don’t think they work. The rhythm is great, some of the images too, but really what blows the whole thing is that it’s too restrictive, too reductive an image of what western Sydney is to be that useful.' (Introduction)

'On 9 May 1933, the day before the Nazis burned her book as part of their action against books of ‘un-German spirit’, Helen Keller wrote an open letter to them, which was published on the front page of the New York Times. ’You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe,’ she said, ‘but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.’ Today, if Helen Keller is thought of at all, it’s as the blind and deaf girl who, through the efforts of her teacher, learned to communicate. There’s scant acknowledgement that she was even capable of having ideas, and she’s often reduced to nothing more than testament to the ideas of others. However, Keller not only spoke, but read and wrote four languages, and was a prolific poet and essayist. The ideas that led to the Nazis burning her book Out of the Dark were contained in the essay ‘Why I Became a Socialist’.' (Introduction)

'I lie on the lush cold grass. It’s familiar and safe, a sensation I have found difficult to retrieve in my adult years. The afternoon rays of light break through the grove of trees as the sound of birds sipping softly on hanging fruit creates a soothing hum. The grass is long enough for me to fade away to watch my own private slideshow of morphing clouds. I feel the damp earth beneath me, breathe in the fresh air that flows freely into my lungs. Nostalgia for a simpler time of making up storylines, of dancing bears and fire-breathing dragons high up in the sky. What I yearn for is a place of uninterrupted peace. Somehow this is more than memory, it is home.' (Introduction)

'Mum tried to find her footing in the loose rocks on a narrow path sandwiched between golden wattle and mountain devil shrub.' (Introduction)