Jana Everett

“And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter - professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the colour of wallpaper, the size of an office or the matter of a dedicated car parking space - was treated with the greatest significance, and everything that did matter - pleasure, joy, friendship, loved - was deemed somehow peripheral.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.”
― Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

“Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“Darky Gardiner loathed Tiny, thought him a fool and would do anything to keep him alive. Because courage, survival, love--all these things didn't live in one man. They lived in them all or they died and every man with them; they had come to believe that to abandon one man was to abandon themselves.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North