Nicole

“A memorial is like a joyless wedding, one to which the whole world is invited, and of that infinite set of possible guests, you have only a vague idea how many will show up. The imperative to get it right—to do justice to the life—is immense. It is another thing that a grieving person is ill-equipped to do.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days

“When I started to write fiction, I came across a piece of advice on the craft of novel writing. Your task, as novelist, is to keep pushing your protagonist’s head under water throughout the narrative. But when you get to the end, you must decide: Will you sink them, or let them swim?”
― Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days

“It’s hard to explain the injustice of the United States health care system to Australians, whose taxpayer-funded Medicare covers everyone, a principle accepted by left and right alike. Australians gasp to learn how Americans are driven to bankruptcy by illness, and that lifesaving medications might cost the uninsured tens of thousands of dollars a year. I had become numb to this madness. But that someone could pay almost five grand for a month’s insurance and not have any coverage was a new level of insanity.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days

“In his writing he was always at his funniest, his smartest, his most thoughtful, and his most courageous and adventurous…. Prose so good it would make you laugh until you cried. I recognize now that his books are not the shade of him. They’re the quintessence of his soul, the distillation of a great adventurer and a good man.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days