The Luminaries Quotes

'Everyone's from somewhere else,' Balfour went on. 'Yes: that's the very heart of it. We're all from somewhere else. And as for family: you'll find brothers and fathers enough, in the gorge' (I.1.54).

'My object was a complicated one…A matter of family disputation, painful to relate, which accounts for my having made the crossing solo' (I.1.51).

'Your father! But what have I told you already? You'll find fathers enough, I said, down in the gorge! That's no turn of phrase—it's custom, and necessity—it's the way that things are done! Let...

He did not yet know that a goldfield was a place of muck and hazard, where every fellow was foreign to the next man, and foreign to the soil; where a grocer's cradle might be thick with color, and...

'Ah,' said Löwenthal. 'Another coincidence' (I.6.270).

This was a gold town, after all, new-built between jungle and surf at the southernmost edge of the civilized world, and he had not expected luxury (I.1.7).

We shall therefore intervene, and render Sook Yongsheng's story in a way that is accurate to the events he wished to disclose, rather than to the style of his narration (I.9.13).

His good humor was quite restored; he was even giddy. Such a tonic for the spirit is the promise of revenge (I.7.317).