Ruth Park

“Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out of the human heart. It is a poison.”

“You couldn't trust anybody. That was the first lesson you learned in Surry Hills.”

“Oh, God, if I'm anything by any chance, make me a writer.”

“The poor are not dull, they are not complacent, they are not all patient.”

“Life was a damned puzzle, a joke played by a bored God.”

“He had a face like a collapsed lung.”

“For in Surry Hills there was no bitterness, but a crapulous and hopeless philosophy that taught that the world was a lousy place, and the only way to get through it was to have a good time.”

“Love, she thought, was a dreadful thing. It was a disease that made you weak and foolish.”

“What's the use of worrying? It never did no good yet.”

“She had a great capacity for loving, and a great need to be loved.”

“The human heart is a dark forest.”

“I wanted to write about the things I knew.”

“Sydney has a sort of hard-boiled glamour.”

“Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”