Hotel Sorrento

Marge (referring to Australia): Do you think this is a country which honors ordinariness?

Dick: No. Well once...maybe...you know, there was once a time when it was impossible to be different. Anyone with any nouse had to pack up and clear out, but it's not like that anymore. And to keep harking back to it--that's what irritates me about that book. It's just safe territory. It's not going to shake anyone up.

Marge: Well, it's shaken me up. Maybe you don't read between the lines.

Dick: I hate nostalgia.

Marge: It's NOT nostalgia.

Dick: Where are the people writing about the big picture? Who's coming to grips with some contemporary vision for this place? Can you think of anyone?

Marge: Meg Moynihan, for one.

Dick: Oh, Jesus.

Marge: The trouble with you is you're looking for the big broad brush strokes. Australia can't be contained in the sort of broad sweep you're asking for. Great big visions make very empty pictures if you don't attend to the small brush strokes...the details.

Dick: So long it's not the details of someone's childhood in Towoomba or tortured adolescence in Woy Woy or... (Marge hits him over the head with a newspaper.)