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Helen Garner Quotes

Helen Garner is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene–it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels, Monkey Grip and The Spare Room .

Throughout her career, Garner has written both fiction and non-fiction. She attracted controversy with her book The First Stone about a sexual-harassment scandal in a university college. She has also written for film and theatre, and has consistently won awards for her work, including the Walkley Award for a 1993 Time Magazine report. Adaptations of two of her works have appeared as feature films: her debut novel Monkey Grip and her true-crime book Joe Cinque's Consolation – the former released in 1982 and the latter in 2016.

Garner's works have covered a broad range of themes and subject matter. She has thrice written true-crime books: first with The First Stone, about the aftermath of a sexual-harassment scandal at a university, followed by Joe Cinque's Consolation, a journalistic novel about the court proceedings involving a young man who died at the hands of his girlfriend, which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Book, and again in 2014 with This House of Grief, about Robert Farquharson, a man who drove his children into a dam. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation site has characterised her as one of Australia's "most important and admired writers", while The Guardian referred to her as "Australia's greatest living writer". Wikipedia  

✵ 7. November 1942
Helen Garner photo

Works

Cosmo Cosmolino
Cosmo Cosmolino
Helen Garner
The Children's Bach
Cosmo Cosmolino
Cosmo Cosmolino
Helen Garner
The Children's Bach
Helen Garner: 17 quotes0 likes

Famous Helen Garner Quotes

“Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 57, describing Maxine.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed.
'I was looking at your mouth. It's exactly the same as mine.'
'Small and mean,' said Pin, whose devotion to the church did not damp her vulgar sense of humour. 'Wanna see a cat's bum?' She pursed her lips into a tight bunch. They snickered in the quiet ward.
'You'll never go to heaven,' said Kathleen. 'You're rude.”

Helen Garner

Page 21.
Honour (1980)

“Out in deep space the planets sweep, inexorable, along their splendid orbits. Maxine bowed her head. From now on she would take the gods' dictation.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 166.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“It's rather like a Poe story, isn't it,' said Patrick luxuriously, unfocusing his eyes. 'A person sees the chance of a better life passing by, and he makes as if to call out' - he flung one arm in the imploring gesture of a soul in torment - 'but something in his nature makes him hesitate. He pauses… he closes his lips… he steps back… and then he slides down, and down, and down.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 8.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along the avenue their patient chime, the chattering of their wheels”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 5.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“He claims,' said Jenny tactfully, 'That he flew through a radioactive cloud thirty years ago and that it didn't do him any harm - thus it's all right to mine uranium. A fine piece of Australian political reasoning.”

Helen Garner

Page 6.
Honour (1980)

Helen Garner Quotes

“Course I care. I always care. But there's no point in making a song and dance about it, like that night he stayed here. Know something? There's only one thing that'll bring 'em back, and that's indifference. The one thing you can't fake.'
'But you are faking it.'
'At the moment I might be. But as soon as it stops being faked and starts being real, he'll turn up. Rule number one of modern life.”

Helen Garner book The Children's Bach

Page 80.
The Children's Bach (1984)

“In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.'
'Are you a doctor, sir?”

Helen Garner

'No. A shoe repairer.'
Page 123.
Other Peoples Children (1980)

“Revolution begins in the kitchen.”

Helen Garner

Other Peoples Children (1980)

“And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 14, postcards the narrator sent.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.”

Helen Garner

In the title story Postcards from Surfers.
Garner describing her mother.
Postcards from Surfers (1985)

“Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 221.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 78.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 150.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen.
'Yep. Four dollars at the Anchorage, remember? That was when I cornered the market in cane chairs, too.'
'Come off it! We only had three.'
'Yes, but the price had doubled by the following Saturday.”

Helen Garner

Page 26.
Honour (1980)

“That,' I said, 'would be a blessing. There are so many things I'd like to forget I hardly know what would be left standing, if I ever got started.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 4.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

“The devil's everywhere,' he said. 'Not just at Brunswick one day and somewhere else the next. He's everywhere.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 101.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

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