Melina marchetta quotes

It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.

I think if I'm ever asked to recall what Year 12 was all about, I'll remember it as one big cappuccino experience.

Causing a riot is what I do best.

See, I remember love. That's what people don't understand.

I stand up, sure of one thing and one thing only. That my father will come and get me. He won't give me a lecture, he won't try to teach me a lesson. He won't ask a thousand questions or ask me to apologize. He'll just come and get me. "Just tell me where you are.

I'm sick and tired of you people living interstate and overseas from people you want to be with. You're ruining my life! All of you!

To have somone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.

I didn't know you had a girlfriend, Griggs." Anson Choi feigns surprise. "What's her name?" "I didn't actually catch her name," Griggs continues. "Lily," Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look. "Great to know that I'm in love with a girl with a cool name." "It's Taylor's middle name," Raffaela calls back again.

And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

The two horsewomen of the apocalypse still win, despite their dwindling numbers.

She comes from the school of getting it out of your system, whereas he comes from the school of stewing over it.

See them together and you will feel a force that will take your breath away.

Do something that scares you everyday.

You're judging her by her literacy," Tara says. "You're a literacist." "You've made that up.

Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

Scatter?' Tate said. 'Why? We stay here. Why go anywhere else?' 'Because we'll never know how great this place is until we leave it,' Narnie said.

He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it's likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.

When one is silent, those around speak even more.

Land?' Froi whispered. 'You're giving them land? I'm not worth the valley.' 'You're worth a kingdom,' Finnikin said, turning back to the crowd.

People with lost personalities will suffer a great deal more than those with lost virginities.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.

What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?" "Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand.

Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.

Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive.

He knew he should have counted. It was the rule to count to ten in his head before he opened his mouth. It was the rule to count to ten if he wanted to smash a man in the face for saying something he didn't like. It was the rule to count to ten if instinct wasn't needed, but common sense was.

he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams.

My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes - the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

Quintana of Charyn's body was a map of hatred.

Sheep. Looting. Cousins." Lucien cursed and got out of bed.

Do you think people have noticed that I'm around?" "I notice when you're not. Does that count?

Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true. The first name shatters him. The second makes his head spin.

If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

The gods do make playthings of us ... but it is we mortals who provide them with the tools.

I don't care what my friends think." "You care what they'l do when they remember that you're the one with personality.

What is it? A prize or something? No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.

I just want it to go back to the way it was." "It'll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.

Everyone had told him to be strong for her, but Finnikin didn't know how to be strong for himself.

Why are you smiling?' Gargarin asked Froi, from across the balconette. 'When you're going to have to learn a lesson in diplomacy today and choose between the gardens of two women?' Froi laughed, his chin resting on Quintana's head, his eyes taking in the joy of his son, despite the ridiculous cap that covered the babe's head. He looked across at Lirah and Arjuro and Rafuel, and then back to Gargarin who was smiling himself, because he knew the answer to his own question. 'Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder.

About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love.

I walk down the steps of the verandah towards her and with shaking hands she holds my face between them, sobbing, "Look at my beautiful girl.

Those full of fear were the most dangerous of people.

I look at him. "It's odious," he says. "Detention?" I ask, confused. "Huh?" We have no idea what the other is talking about. "What's odious?" I ask. "O.D.S," he says, pointing to his discman and obviously referring to some dropkick band. Like I really care.

Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.

She made a sound of regret. ‘We come second, you and I, Luc-ien,’ she said. ‘Our allegiance is always to our kingdoms. Without that allegiance, our people would fall.’ She placed her head back against his chest and he felt her tears. ‘This is not our time.’ ‘But that will never mean I love you less,’ he said.

A piece of me is gone," she told me once while we were bra shopping. "I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.

Sometimes I feel like a junkie. One minute something happens in my life and I'm flying. Next minute I take a nose-dive and just as I'm about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.

If you weren't driving, I'd kiss you senseless," I tell him. He swerves to the side of the road and stops the car abruptly. "Not driving any more.

I'm beginning to realize that things don't turn out the way you want them to. And sometimes, when they don't they can turn out just a little bit better.

She asked me what type of contraceptive I use. Underwear. Keeping it on prevents pregnancy.

Hannah, do you think that your mum and dad and Tate's mum and dad and my mum and dad and Webb and Tate are all together someplace?' she asks earnestly. I look at Hannah, waiting for the answer. And then she smiles. Webb once said that a Narnie smile was a revelation and, at this moment, I need a revelation. And I get one. 'I wonder,' Hannah says.

Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.

Her voice whispering love soothes him. They'd never done that before. Weren't that type of family. Except now he doesn't know what kind of family they are. What word is it that can define them? What would they call his family in the textbooks? Broken? He comes from a broken home. The Mackees can't be put back together again. There are too many pieces of them missing.

I'm scared to die," I whispered as Michael walked in. "He was scared to live," he said kissing my forehead.

I never thought meeting you would be this boring. I thought we'd put our Italian emotion into gear and scream the place down. I never expected indifference.

I want to be sitting in front of my computer, where you can press a button to block out your junk mail. These two are my junk mail.

Tom’s aunt Georgie spoke to me first, and Tom found me through her. At the time, I didn’t actually think Tom was a big enough character to carry a story. If it had to be anyone from Saving Francesca, I thought, it would be Will Trombal or Tara. But the line in Francesca, ‘I want to be the first male in the Mackee family to reach 40 and still have a liver’ stuck with me, and in the end, Tom has been one of the biggest surprises. I’m glad I didn’t kick him out of my head.

Never underestimate the value of knowing another's language. It can be far more powerful than swords and arrows.

It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door. He turns around. “What?” Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up. “The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.

All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.

You just have to belong. Long to be.

No stories or explanations,' Finnikin had once told him. 'When it comes to women, straight into an apology and you will find the rest of your life bearable.

He just watched the way Finnikin’s hands rested on Evanjalin’s neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself.

You can't go around feeling too much.

Do you want to hang out? At your place or something?" Hanging out with Jimmy Hailler will mean that I have to say hello to him every day. I'm not ready to say hello to him every day. Too much commitment. It's bad enough that I'm sharing chocolate brownies swith him. I shake my head. "Not today.

Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.

Strange? I don't think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls.

But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.

The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.

Because photos are testimony that someone did live. A reminder of past we may have loved or hated. A piece of our lives.

And I hear nothing because it's like the volume button has been turned down on our lives and nobody has anything to say anymore." "I want to be an adjective again. But I am a noun.

Brothers always. Balthazar is with us too. We make this work,' Finnikin said fiercely. 'We bring peace to these kingdoms. We deserve it. Our women do. All of us have lost too much, Froi. We've lost the joy of being children. Let's not take that from Jasmina and Tariq and those who come after them

They either don't get it or don't want to. Maybe I'm just not selling it well.

Finn, listen!" Trevanion said, his voice raw."I prayed to see you one more time. It's all I prayed for. Nothing more. And my prayers were answered. Go east, I'll lend them west." "We have a dilemma, then," Finnikin said fiercely. "Because I prayed that you would grow old and hold my children in your arms as you held me. My prayers have not been answered yet, Trevanion. So whose prayer is more worthy? Yours or mine?

If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it.

She gently placed his hand against the beating pulse of her heart. Always, always it beat out of control, and he held his hand to it until he felt it perfectly match his.

I ran away one day. He was running in the same direction.

No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

I didn't realize until those few days how much a hug meant. To have someone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.

Simple dreams are the hardest to come true

I'm not interested in those who do me wrong. There's not enough time in the day for them.

In the end, the sum of my vices is all me.

He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.

Oh, you've outdone me twice now, you queen of forgiveness. The ring's a promise of peace and I'm greedy with hope. It's a song that we sing in a tongue that we share. And though you say it's a gift from a king to a king, I say it's a sign from a queen to a queen.

Don't let me outlive this woman. Don't let me exist one moment without her.

His father's made us paint half this town and if we stick around any longer he'll make us paint the rest of it." -Jonah Griggs

It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.

Why do I feel like something's missing in my life without them and they don't feel the same about me?

We pass more women with swollen bellies hurrying towards the godshouse and Arjuro presses a kiss to Tariq's outstretched fingers. 'She's mocking me, runt of our litter,' Arjuro tells him. 'The Oracle is mocking me for choosing a man to share my bed. And her punishment is that I spend the rest of eternity staring between the legs of women.

According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.

Don't let anyone take care of you. Can you maybe leave that for me to do? I mean, take care of you? Feel free to take care of me in return... because I think I'll need you to do that.

What do you think would happen if we kissed right here, right now?" he asks, digging his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, grinning right back at me. "I think it would cause a riot." "Well, you know me," he says, lowering his head towards me. "Causing a riot is what I do best." Santangelo approaches before Griggs gets any closer and pulls him away. "Are you guys insane?" he says, irritated. "It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians," I say, throwing his own words back at him.

Don't you ever touch my car again," Santangelo says with the same fury he had on his face when Jonah Griggs made comments about his mother. Raffy touches the car with her finger in a very dramatic way. "You've just made our hit list," he says, getting a hanky out of his pocket and cleaning off some imaginary mark.

A blind man can see what she feels for you and you for her. Your souls are not merely entwined; they are fused.

I think that we vote, not to get the best party in, but to keep the worst party out.

We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy. "And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says. Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them. "Lamb roast. Am I invited?

Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.

...what was it like out there? Kind of describe it to us," Jessa says, beaming at them and then at me. Trini beams at her and there's a lot of beaming happening.

Phaedra shook her head. “If your people mean no offense, they should not speak their thoughts out loud in front of their children, Tesadora. Because it will be their children who come to slaughter us one day, all because of careless words passed down by their elders who meant no harm.

Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you. But no one does.

The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths.

You're going to set us all on fire, you homicidal feral fruitcake.

What are you so sad about? We're going to know him for the rest of our lives.

I love it when you're demented like this.

You’re going to have to learn to ride a horse on your own, Phaedra', he said. 'It will make the journey faster.' 'The mule and I have an agreement.' 'The mule and you have similar traits.

You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.

In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.

They separate us into groups. The Ringleaders and the Others. I belong to the Ringleaders because my weak, pathetic, traitorous, fundamentally base peers point to me when someone asks them who is in charge.

Even five minutes of your time can make someone's day.

I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.

We look at each other for a moment and for once I feel awkward. It's not that I'm not into humility; I've just never had to practise it.

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn't be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.

It's how they've stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn't breathe anymore.

But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it. And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.

There are worse things than a lie and there are better things than the truth!

And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die.

So between you and me," I tell Justine on the phone that night, "we're either bitchy or stupid." "Oh God," she moans. "Everyone thinks I'm an idiot." "Thanks!

A kiss is the prize?’ he asked sadly. ‘Even more than giving me the rest of you? It should be the other way round, Princess. In the real world, it's called courting. You let a lad kiss you and then you offer him more.’ ‘Let me tell you something, Olivier,’ she said with tears of sorrow in her eyes, ‘this is my real world.

Do you miss being friends with Santangelo?" I ask her after the lights are out and we're almost asleep. "What makes you think were friends?" "Everything." I hear her yawn. "Being enemies with him is better." she tells me. There's a long pause and I think she's going to say something more but she doesn't and it's just silence for a long while.