Rebecca Sparrow Quotes

My father is standing at the sink wearing a too-tight long-sleeved red T-Shirt, a pair of too-high jeans and sporting the type of orange glow that belongs only on Chernobyl victims. Plus his hair looks like an oil spill.
'Hey you,' he says, washing what looks to be some carrots under the sink. Are they carrots or are they parsnips reflecting the sheen of my father's tangerine skin? Hard to tell.
'You've fake tanned yourself again,' I say - it's a statement, not a question. 'Too much?' he says, innocently. 'I just didn't want to be one of those pasty office workers and I thought it wouldn't hurt to back up last week's application with another hit.'
'Dad, you look-'
'Sun kissed?'
'Radioactive. And what the hell happened to your hands?'
- Cat

For a moment we sit in silence. Eventually, I turn to him and say, "Do you believe in God?"
His eyes narrow for a moment and he stares at me at me for a while. Stares in a rather intense way, like a doctor looking at a troubling X-ray. Then he looks out the and says in a voice like shattered glass, "Only in storms.

You know what your mum might be?'

'You're not really asking, are you? This is rhetorical, isn't it?'

'A real life desperate housewife. Maybe your mum's hooking and she -'

"What are you, drunk? There's a five-year-old in the back seat. And, PS, you're not helping. All she said is that she's at the station. Not in jail. Now, I don't want to talk anymore about it.

Mark and I spend the remainder of the car trip in silence. Emma, on the other hand, takes it upon herself to sing every verse of It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp. Next chance I get I'm gonna confiscate her copy of Hustle and Flow and change her computer password from GEELOVE to MONOBROW.

- Cat

She looks at my father, the human jaffa. 'Hey Dr Davis. You're looking...'

'Orange,' I say matter-of-factly. I turn and look at her, 'Trust me, you don't wanna know.'

- Cat

I feel like saying something back to her. Something like, 'Eat hanger, bitch.' Except that Skeletor here doesn't look like she's eaten anything at all since last October. But I don't say anything, of course. Instead I stand there and take shit from someone who looks like a praying mantis in drag.
- Cat

She sorts out her lipstick with a glance in the hall mirror, her free hand simultaneously pointing out rogue books and magazines that suddenly, urgently need me to tidy them. She ducks into her bedroom, rummages noisily, makes a brief appearance in the hallway in what can only be described as a Poncho. 'No,' she says. 'No.' And she balls it up and flings it back through her bedroom door. I want to medicate her. One of those tranquilliser darts they use to bring down big cats would do.

- Joel

Insane asylum' - among the great narrative options, that'd be one step short of 'and then she woke up', right? Or is that what you're planning next episode as we push the tandem-story envelope?

Cool nude-hairbrushing scene, by the way. I assume it's her butt that the pillow's caressing? She's a thoughtful one, isn't she? Shame about the hair knot. That could wreck a person's whole day.

- Joel

After the third call from my mother, he comes in in a Hawaiian shirt. He is, frankly, bright orange. A shade of personal orange that startles even my mother. A shade that doesn't say health, it says Dulux.

Why would I care whether or not the seats were padded?'

And then I look up, biting my lip, and I watch as the realisation hits him.

'OH MY GOD. You know? He told you?'

'I walked in on my little brother playing doctor this morning with his dolls. Put it this way, Harry Potter was giving Batman the finger and not in the way you'd expect.'

- Cat

I just asked the Psychic Lettuce what my future holds, and it said, 'You will live alone with sixty guinea pigs. And they will all be called Peter'.

Five minutes later and the three of us are pushing through the heavy, swinging doors of the Brisbane Watchhouse. A place that at six on a Tuesday evening looks like Little Nimbin - we're the only ones wearing shoes. 'Remind me what we're here to get - you know, apart from head lice and maybe tinea?' I say to no one in particular.

- Cat

I don't hate you, you're just the most annoying person in my life.

Still, Emma and I somehow struck up the type of friendship that lasts through primary school and high-school cliques, and our fathers are both doctors, although my dad is a GP and Dr Frank is a gynecologist (or, as Emma's two older brothers prefer to call him, a 'box mechanic'). In many ways, I think Emma and I balance each other out - at least, I hope we do. She forces me to be less cynical and bitter. And I'm on hand to remind her that, as long as she has two eyebrows rather than one, she has nothing to worry about. I text her back: 'Call me when you can plait them.'

- Cat