quote from flanagan

as i've mentioned previously,  i hold that richard flanagan(australian writer from tasmania) is one of the most gifted authors today and clearly one of my favorites.   i highly recommend the two books i've read by him - "gould's book of fish" and "the sound of one hand clapping."   from the latter book, i share this quote because he somehow (not being a refugee himself) captures the pathos and perspective of one who has suffered much, lost everything and is without an identity or a place to belong -

"The unadorned electric bulb above their heads burnt like the wordless things they carried in their hearts.  She tried not to see them: these men who had loved other places faraway and had loved other people either long dead or as good as long dead for all the contact they would ever know again with one another, so their strong talk avoided talking about any matter of strength, any matter to deal with love, or, for that matter, hate.  She tried not to hear them: their babble about lust and grog and work and other empty matters in such violent language to give each other but chiefly themselves the impression that what they were talking about mattered, that they might have some measure of power over it, that it might be life, and that they had not already died.  They drank the moon down and the sun up, but in truth they belonged no more to the night than to day.  They were lost in time, as they were in everything."