Death of a River Guide Quotes

“He fell asleep and again dreamt of being rowed by two myrtle trees, except this time they rowed through the stars to the moon, and it was quiet, and while everything went on forever the stars were as knowable and as safe and as comforting a world as that of the rainforested rivers.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“A man that would lead you to go to so much trouble over yourself can only lead to trouble,” she admonished Sonja. But before she left she sprinkled the inside of the top and the waist of the dress with ground cloves. And cackled, “Fruit is best eaten seasoned.” Never again would Harry be able to eat apple Strudel without feeling the most terrible desire.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“Long after, as Harry was dying, he thought about the day he and Sonja had arrived in Hobart, thought of the love he had once had for Sonja, the love that had seemed so strong, that had seemed so eternal. Where had it gone? As he lay there with the drips spiralling around his cancer-bloated belly he remembered Sonja and what they had and what they had lost. Why do such things so often prove so transitory? In the end he thought that he hated Sonja. But then, in the methylated-spirit afterscent of the ward, the smell of the flesh of her back as he lay curled up behind her came back to him and the smell of clove dust came back to him and the sound of her voice came back to him one last time. O I am missing you. How much he had loved her. O I am missing you.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“They only know that for one moment in their entire school lives they had posed a question about the injustice of their destiny, and the adults had not only not known the answer, they had been too ignorant to understand the question. But none of it can be put into words. And nobody tries.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“To the teachers he is a smartarse. At high school he makes a point of failing at everything. But only after he has made a point of showing the teachers that he is smart. Only after he writes a good story. Or does all his maths quickly and correctly under the eye of the teacher. Why? wonder his teachers. Here within the river it is hard to see exactly why, but even through the thousands of litres of water rushing over me one thing is abundantly clear: by failing Aljaz begins to fit in with people. I watch him quickly come to the conclusion that success brings only contempt, whilst there is a camaraderie amongst the ranks of the fallen.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“My vision, as if seeking refuge, passes from this cold white outside world into a rude wooden house that stands alone in the snow-hushed bush. There Harry’s mother Rose pants and screams the agonies of birth in a tiny kitchen, the warmest of the three rooms that comprise her home. At the end of the kitchen the fire burns and crackles with fury, sparks lifting into the chimney from the piled up gum logs. Her husband, Boy Lewis, as he was known until his dying day, helps her through the birth himself, and when she has delivered the afterbirth he lays the two small bodies upon her chest, the dead boy baby and the living boy baby. Rose lies on a blanket on the split paling floor and listens to the sleety wind rustling the branches of the huge stringybark gums outside, and she thinks it the saddest sound in the whole world.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide

“Then, breaking forth from a bizarre low angle, a ray of light shining up the gorge illuminating a world otherwise cast in darkness by the black rain clouds above. The water reflects a white brilliance. From where I am watching, the mass of glistening white is momentarily blinding. It takes some time for my eyes to adjust to this whiteness and recognise the river. The Franklin River. A world pure and whole and complete unto itself. Neither rubber condoms nor rubber tyres nor tin cans nor dioxins nor bent rusting chrome reminders of the cars they once graced nor any of the other detritrus of our world seem to abide here. This is an alien world. This is the river. Rising in the Cheyne Range. Falling down Mt Gell. Writhing like a snake in the wild lands at the base of the huge massif of Frenchmans Cap. Writing its past and prophesying its future in massive gorges slicing through mountains and cliffs so undercut they call them verandahs, and in eroded boulders and beautiful gilded eggs of river stone, and in beaches of river gravel that shift year to year, flood to flood, and in that gravel that once was rounded river rock that once was eroded boulder that once was undercut cliff that once was mountain and which will be again.”
― Richard Flanagan, Death Of A River Guide