WHERE IS GOD?

'"So God's up there? I say, pointing to all those wonderful stars. "A someone?"
"Everywhere, Ort. He's everything. The trees, the ground, the water. Everything stinks of God, reeks of him."'
Tim Winton, That Eye, The Sky, p.89.

FAITH NEEDS A STORY

'It was in church that I learnt how perilously faith depends upon story, for without narrative there is only theological assertion, which is, in effect, inert cargo. Story is the beast of burden, the bearer of imaginative energy.' 

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, p.106. 

WHAT CHURCH PROMOTES

'Church-going was my introduction to conscious living. Nowhere else was I exposed to the kind of self-examination and reflective discipline that the faith of my childhood required. I'd be surprised if anyone at my boyhood church had even a page of Tolstoy, but it seemed to me now that the question that ate at him so late in his life was the central issue for us, too. What then must we do?'

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Questions, p.100. 

BREAKING BAD NEWS

'At fourteen, alongside my father, I'd had to help break the news to a close mate that his father had been killed. The feeling is hideous. It's like killing someone. They go down like a water buffalo by an axe, and some part of you believes it's your fault.' 

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, p.46. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS

'At some level every kid knows that his parents' wellbeing is paramount to his own safety, even his sense of self.' 

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, p.43. 

THE EMOTIONAL LITERACY OF CHILDREN

'How quick children are to absorb the unexpressed anxieties of their parents; how fluent they become in the unconscious art of compensation, and how instinctive is their assumption of responsibility.' 

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain: Notes from an Australian Life, p.40. 

MARRIAGE

'"How does it feel to be married?" he called.

She did not answer; it seemed as though she had not heard. How does it feel? she was thinking. It feels like waking up on your twenty-first birthday and realizing that there's no change, that you don't feel an ounce older. That's how it feels. So why ask me? You know how it feels, it's written all over you.' 

Tim Winton, Scission, p.89.

GOD'S TOUCH

'As they turned off the bitumen road into their own run of gravel to the yellow-lit house down in the valley, Albie ended the silence with a question. He was startled by his own toneless delivery.

"Why did that man hit his son for getting hurt?"

His father sighed. He sounded relieved that the silence was finished. "I don't know, boy."

"Would you do that to me?"

The truck slewed and stopped.

"Lord, no. God A'mighty, no!"

"He was going home," Albie said.

His father's mouth moved. He reached out and put his knuckles to Albie's cheek, left them there for a long time, as though still waiting for words to come. "Sorry about the salmon," he said at last, "I should've known better."

The truck moved forward again. Albie felt those knuckles on his cheek still and knew, full to bursting, that that was how God would touch someone. He neither moved nor spoke, and the truck trundled on.'

Tim Winton, Scission, p.13.

PRAYER

'"Come on, Dad. Come on, Dad. Come on, Dad." He often prayed to his father in his absence. God, he decided, was just like his Dad, only bigger. It was easier to pray to him and hope God got the message on relay.'

Tim Winton, Scission, p.9.

HUMANKIND

'The gaols are full of blokes we'd swear are different to us. Only difference is, they did things you and me just thought about. 

That's still a big difference, said Rose. 

Maybe. A second's difference.' 

Tim Winton, Cloudstreet, p.408.