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Still you can't keep doing the coulda and the woulda and the shoulda. And if there's one thing I know it's this. Doesn't matter how smart you are, or even how careful or lucky, there's some mistakes you just keep making over and over.

There was always a manic energy about Loonie, some strange hotwired spirit that made you laugh with shock. He hurled himself at the world. You could never second-guess him and once he embarked upon something there was no holding him back. Yet the same stuff you marvelled at could really wear you down. Some Mondays I was relieved to be back on the bus to school.

Another man, an American, had once told her in a high, laughing moment his theory of love. It was magic, he said. "The magic ain't real, darlin, but when it's gone it's over."

Georgie didn't want to believe in such thin stuff, that all devotion was fuelled by delusion, that you needed some spurious myth to keep you going in love or work or service. Yet she'd felt romance evaporate often enough to make her wonder.

It's one thing to think someone's stupid. And fair enough if you need them to be. But you can't go banking on it. That's a mug's game.

I didn't even know why I liked her. She was just there. I was used to her.

I suspect I only really liked her because she liked me first.

For all those years when Loonie and I surfed together, having caught the bug that first morning at the Point, we never spoke about the business of beauty. We were mates but there were places our conversation simply couldn't go. There was never any doubt about the primary thrill of surfing, the huge body-rush we got flying down the line with the wind in our ears. We didn't know what endorphins were but we quickly understood how narcotic the feeling was, and how addictive it became; from day one I was stoned from just watching. We talked about skill and courage and luck - we shared all that, and in time we surfed to fool with death - but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do.

Maybe old Pete-the-Post was right - you never really know anybody, not even those you loved. People have shadows, secrets.

There isn't one thing in the world hot and hard as knowing there's someone waiting, coming, pressing, wanting you.

Why was it that he didn't know a thing about the underlying nature of people, the shadows and shifts, the hungers and hopes that caused them to do the things they did?

"It does you good to be tenants. It reminds you of your own true position in the world."

"Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes."