The revolution is not an antidote for bored young ladies and gentlemen.

- Hans Koning, The Revolutionary: 150

 

A great revolutionary’s leadership

Why did his little speech do so much to revive everyone, and clear the atmosphere of all the bickering and sullenness? Not because of what Despard says, A. thought, but of course because of the kind of person he is. Here’s certainly an uncorrupted man. He doesn’t want us to follow him, he wants to be a sort of catalyst. I can listen to him and fit in, do what he wants me to do, and feel at the same time as free as that first evening of spring, at the freight station, a week ago, with no-one in the whole world knowing where I was, who I was.

- Hans Koning, The Revolutionary: 144

 

May Day

The first of May was to be their day. They should work on this one goal, to turn out the greatest May Day demonstration ever seen.

- Hans Koning, The Revolutionary: 143

 

Lecture from a father: self preservation

“Don’t you realise it is a law of nature, taking care of yourself? You’ve tried to go against the laws of this country, and that was bad enough. And what did it get you? You looked like a beggar when you came back. But do you now want to defy the laws of nature too? A bird, a bug, know to take care of themselves.’

- Hans Koning, The Revolutionary 123

 

Jane Gallagher

She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn’t exactly describe her as beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way her mouth… She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, with all of the poems written on it.

- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye : 82

 

The hardest thing

And then he began wondering if he himself had the nerve; if he wanted it; if it were really necessary in life to do the hardest thing.

- Hans Koningsberger, The Revolutionary: 61

 

The young May couldn’t bring herself to walk away …

The young May couldn’t bring herself to walk away from a crusade. And so she couldn’t abandon Queensland. What place in the world, after all, needed her help more? Staying in Brisbane was her first act of self-sacrifice.
Hence university and the political studies and the activism. But it all went wrong. The crusade went nowhere. The people of Queensland didn’t want to be saved, her fellow missionaries all betrayed the cause and she ended up alone in a prison cell. All that concern and outrage and desire to improve things thrown back in her face. The world wanted to be the way it was. No wonder that when Jeremy came sliding in, arch manipulator of the young that he already was, he found her so easy to turn.
But there was a price, and from that moment on there would be a fatal division in May. While betraying all the beliefs of her youth, she could never embrace the opposite philosophy either… She did what they wanted of her, but for all that they might whisper in her ear that theirs was the only way, the right way, she was never completely convinced, could never quite forgive herself. So she was left with no beliefs at all, only an anchorless cynicism. One of us but eternally an outsider, holding as much disgust for her new life as she was disillusioned with her old. She wasn’t there for the money or the greed or the indulgence. She shared none of our laziness or self-congratulation. She was alone in her vacuum, cold and clear, and so formed a single, bright point in the muddy haze that was our world.

- Andrew McGahan, Last drinks : p.193

 

Weatherman’s fugitive life

Weatherman sought, above all, to destroy any vestiges of “bourgeois individualism” that would dilute members’ commitment to the group and its goal of revolution. To this end, the collectives instituted a strict set of rules, rites and rituals. All personal property was either shared or renounced outright. To sustain themselves and fund their political activities, the members stole food from grocery stores and begged or borrowed money from friends and family (though some held jobs, turning their income over to the group). Even so, the Weathermen were nearly broke and lived in Spartan dwellings on a diet of noodles and other simple foods.

- Jeremy Varon, Bringing the war home : 56.

 

Holding hands

 Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand DIES on you, or else they think they have to keep MOVING their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something.  Jane was different.  We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over.  And without changing position or making a big deal out of it.  You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not.  All you knew was, you were happy.  You really were.- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the
Rye : 84.