From Tim Winton, Cloud street.
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About Sam Pickles:
“He believed deeply in luck, the old man, though he was careful never to say the word. He called it the shifty shadow of God. All his life he paid close attention to the movements of that shadow. He taught Sam to see it passing, feel it hovering, because he said it was those shifts that governed a man’s life and it always paid to be ahead of the play. If the chill of its shade felt good ,you went out to meet it like a droughted farmer goes out, arms wide, to greet the rain cloud, but if you got that sick, queer feeling in your belly, you had to stay put and do nothing but breathe and there was a good chance it would pass you by. It was as though luck made choices, that it could think. If you greeted it, it came to you; if you shunned it, it backed away.”
[…]
“People had loved him. He was poor and foolish and people will always have a place in their hearts for the harmless.”
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About Oriel Lamb:
“We’re not frightened animals, Lester, just waiting with some dumb thoughtless patience for the tide to turn. I’m not spendin my livin breathin life quietly takin the good with the bad; bad people, bad luck, bad ways, not even bad breath. We make good, Lester. We make war on the bad and don’t surrender.”
[…]
“We don’t belong anywhere. When I was a little girl I had this feeling that I didn’t belong anywhere, not in my body, not on the land. It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed, Lester, that’s where I belonged, that was my country. That was the final line of defense in the war.”