Cloudstreet Quotes

“Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Everything was normal and right. There were dishes in the sink and the sound of kids playing in the street and the trains passing smutty wind. Something had settled over the kitchen. Rose kept the colours inside the lines and all the patterns were proper, sensible and neat. Happiness. That's what it was.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.

No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there's no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Keep the day ahead of you, that's what the old man used to say.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of kids fighting bath time. Lester comes down, waving his hands.
Don't drown the pig, Fish. We're saving him for Christmas! We're gonna eat him.
No!
I'll drink to that, says the pig.
Lester stands there. He looks at Fish. He looks at the porker. He peeps over the fence. The pig. The flamin' pig. The pig has just spoken. It's no language that he can understand, but there's no doubt. He feels a little crook, like maybe he should go over to that tree and puke.
I like him, Lestah.
He talks?
Yep.
Oh, my gawd.
Lester looks at his retarded son again and once more at the pig.
The pig talks.
I likes him.
Yeah, I bet.
The pig snuffles, lets off a few syllables: aka sembon itwa. It's tongues, that's what it is. A blasted Pentecostal pig.
And you understand him?
Yep. I likes him.
Always the miracles you don't need. It's not a simple world, Fish. It's not.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Hoping is what people do when they’re too lazy to do anything else. People”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.”
― Tim Winton - Cloudstreet, Cloudstreet

“Dogs get howling all down the way. Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light in the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“There was dew on the flaccid wires of the fences and magpies were strung along them like beads.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“During those years of travel I saw that architecture is what we console ourselves with once we’ve obliterated our natural landscapes.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Life was something you didn’t argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“You can't steer if you're not goin faster than the current. If you're not under your own steam then yer just debris, stuff floatin. We’re not frightened animals, Lester, just waitin with some dumb thoughtless patience for the tide to turn. I'm not spendin my livin breathin life quietly takin the good with the bad. I'm not standin for the bad; bad people, bad luck, bad ways, not even bad breath. We make good, Lester. We make war on the bad and don't surrender.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“No. No, Oriel said, it does you good to be tenants. It reminds you of your own true position in the world. Sam blinked. A house should be a home, a privilege, not a possession. It’s foolish to get attached. Yairs. Yairs, Sam said. There’s the practicals to be thought of.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Strange, but she can’t feel any anger. All her life she’s been angry, and now she can’t feel it, when she should feel it strong and hard like metal under her skin. For a while she debates the idea of telling Quick Lamb where she’s been, what she’s just come through, but one look will tell a girl he doesn’t need to know. Actually, he’s so damn incurious as to be a bit startling. She watches him with the line in his fingers, the low light of the lamp easy on his jaw, and sees how far back in him his mind is, how he has a strange tranquillity riding across the heat she saw a while ago with that brother business. It doesn’t seem like resignation, just some time-biding patience that’s new to her, not fierce like her determination to make something for herself, but firm all the same. Like an old, old man waiting for something he’s been promised.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“There’s always the family, says Lester. Families aren’t things you believe in, they’re things you work with. Don’t you believe in … love? No. No? Lester bites the ends of his fingers. I feel love. I’m stuck with the love I’ve got, and I’m tryin to work up the love I haven’t got. Do you believe in love, he says. It’s like sayin Do you believe in babies. They happen. What about goodness, lovingkindness, charity? They’re just things you do, you try to do. There’s no point believin in em. So what do you want? says Lester. I want my country back.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“You've got a huge whanger, she says. That's what I like about you, Quick. A head like that, it'd be eligible to vote.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Expect bad luck, was his new creed, and now and then you'll be surprised. It saved him from a lot of disappointment.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“That's one thing you'll learn. The lost will stay with you.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Is it the war that’s done it to you? 
It’s all war, she said. What is? I don’t know. Everythin. Raisin a family, keepin yer head above water. Life. War is our natural state.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“I'm in the business of useless beauty," he says. "And I'm happy with that. "

"I don't think art needs an excuse to exist. We need beauty in our lives, so we don't go mad.”
― Tim Winton , Cloudstreet

“You need some ambition.

What big ambition did you have, apart from wantin to be a hero?

Nothin. I just wanted to be a good man.

That's all I want.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“One”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Even as a boy he'd known that his father's soul had touched him on the way up. He knew that meant something big and quiet and scary as hell”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“What does it mean for a community to edit itself like this, to so spurn the past – or perhaps fear it – that the slate must be wiped clean for each new generation? What self-hatred does this betray?”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet