Flesh Wounds Quotes

“Our modern history begins in 1788 with the dumping of the human detritus of Britain ... Yet repositioned in the sunlight , they flourished. ...This was colonial Australia's great gift to the world: practical proof that, when it comes to human society, the soil is more important than the seed.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds

“I would cycle to that creek where kids had constructed a raft from old oil drums and tried to make it float. But I also remember the occasional loneliness of a ’60s childhood. Many parents were simply disengaged. They didn’t ‘give kids their freedom’; they just weren’t that interested in their role as parents. There were paedophiles in the bushes, out-of-control priests in the choir stalls and gangs in the schoolyard. And when things did go wrong, there was no culture of intimacy and trust between parent and child that allowed the child to tell and the parent to believe.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds

“This, I thought, is the problem with self-love. It’s so rarely reciprocated.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds

“I imagine Einstein emerging from his bedroom: ‘Mother, good news, I have just unified space and time in one theory. I’m calling it my Special Theory of Relativity.’ ‘Albert, Albert, don’t be a show-off. No one likes a bragger. If the theory is so special, you should let other people say so.’ Or Sir Edmund Hillary, back from Everest: ‘I made it, Dad.’ ‘Well, that’s good, son, but it’s no reason to tramp snow into the living room.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds

“In most households, you’d have had variations on this discussion: ‘Hey, Mum, good news – I scored 99 out of 100 in the French test.’ ‘Oh, what a shame. You’d better work on the word you messed up.’ ‘I also got 99 out of 100 for mathematics.’ ‘That’s why you should have studied harder the night before. And don’t use the word “got”; “received” is better.’ ‘Well, Mum – what about this? I received 100 out of 100 in history.’ ‘Don’t brag, darling. It’s not nice.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds

“Most primary-school children would travel solo to school and head home again at the end of the day. And the whole project of engaging with your children – praising them and cheering them on – was not even considered. Worse, the merest flicker of praise was condemned as something that might produce a child ‘with tickets on himself’ or ‘too big for his boots’.”
― Richard Glover, Flesh Wounds