“A person could explode if he had to think too much.”

“That’s what Lockie was—a little boy.It could do your head in if you thought too much about the cruelty that one person could inflict on another. It was best not to think about it, but here in front of Tina stood an example of the worst cruelty in the world.There was a large bump on one of his ribs. Tina knew what a bone that had healed itself looked like; Mark and the boys were always getting themselves into trouble.It was too much to think about. Too much to try and imagine the pain Lockie must have been in. Too much to imagine him crying for his mother and father. He was so small, so defenceless.”

“Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.”

“Too much thinking can make a person ill at ease.”

“The truth was obscure,Too profound and too pure,To live it you had to explode”

“He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.”