Wake in Fright Quotes

“Peculiar trait of the western people, thought Grant, that you could sleep with their wives, despoil their daughters, sponge on them, defraud them, do almost anything that would mean at least ostracism in normal society, and they would barely seem to notice it. But refuse to drink with them and you immediately became a mortal enemy. What the hell? He didn’t even want to think about the west or its people and their peculiarities. Let them be. Once he was in Sydney, who knew, he might never come back.”
― Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright: Text Classics

“In the remote towns of the west there are few of the amenities of civilization; there is no sewerage, there are no hospitals, rarely a doctor; the food is dreary and flavourless from long carrying, the water is bad; electricity is for the few who can afford their own plant, roads are mostly non-existent; there are no theatres, no picture shows and few dance halls; and the people are saved from stark insanity by the one strong principle of progress that is ingrained for a thousand miles east, north, south and west of the Dead Heart - the beer is always cold.”
― Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright

“When you travel by road in the west you travel with a cohort of dust which streams up from your tyres and rolls away in a disintegrating funnel, defining the currents of air your vehicle sets in motion … And the heat is unthinkable, no matter how widely the windows are open, and the sweat streams off your body and into your socks, and if there are a number of people in the car their body stenches mingle disagreeably”
― Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright

“I can see quite clearly the ingenuity whereby a man may be made mean or great by exactly the same circumstances.
I can see quite clearly that even if he chooses meanness the things he brings about can even then be welded into a pattern of sanity for him to take advantage of if he wishes. What I can't altogether see - he turned his eyes from the stars to the blackness of the plains and back to the stars again - what I can't altogether see is why I should be permitted to be alive, and to know these things...”
― Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright

“Grant felt a little conspicuous in his safari jacket.”
― Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright