Boy Swallows Universe

by Trent Dalton

‘Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ’em.’

Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

‘You don’t always have to be standing by someone to stand by them,’

Mums maybe too, I guess, but there ain’t no shit mum in this world that wasn’t first the daughter of a shit dad.

‘Time will do you in,’ he said. ‘So do your time before it does you.’

Don’t ever be ashamed of giving a shit. Too many people in this world are too scared to cry because they’re too scared to give a shit.’

‘Sacrifice,’ he said. ‘Never grow attached to anything you can’t instantly separate yourself from.’

never tell the full truth because the full truth is shit most sane people can’t even wrap their heads around.’

‘They’re the only dreams worth having, the ones you remember,’

‘Most things people say don’t need to be said,’

‘A bee sting smarts like a bitch until someone clubs you with a cricket bat.

‘The whole point of life is doing what’s right, not what’s easy.’