“Lil had always believed that a person's duty was to make the best of the hand they were dealt. No use wondering what might have been, she used to say, all that matters is what is.”

“They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked and why. Nell was a big one for asking why-why did the sun hide at night, why didn't the fire flames leap out of the gate, why didn't the river get bored and run the other way?-and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell's little face. For the first time in her life, Lil felt useful, needed, whole.”

“She was the sort of person who needed to be kept happy, he realized. Not as a matter of selfish expectation, but as a simple fact of design; like a piano or a harp, she'd been made to function best at a certain tuning.”

“The certainty that she would find what it was she sought just slipped away, until one night she knew there was nothing, no one waiting for her. That no matter how far she walked, how carefully she searched, how much she wanted to find the person she was looking for, she was alone" - The Forgotten Garden”

“Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.”

“A way of looking at you that told you she was listening, that she understood all you were saying, and all you weren't.”

“there was a pessimism in his soul, a darkness in his outlook, that always left her somehow more aware of hard edges than she had been before.”