Melina Marchetta Quotes

Great to know that I'm in love with a girl with a cool name." "It's Taylor's middle name.

It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians

What are you doing?" she asked, trying to raise herself. "First, I thought I'd show you what a pity it would be if they cut off my wicked tongue.

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

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.

One day" came. Because finally I understood.

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.

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.

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

Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder.

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.

Instinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundred of kilometers away from home. Hannah, however, did the unforgivable. She deserted me in our own backyard.

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

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

Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.

Logical Tom begs emotional stupid dickhead Tom not to ask the question. 'Are you alone?' he asks quietly. He hears her breathing so close to his ear. 'Yes.' 'Good,' he says, his voice croaky. 'I'll sleep like a baby.

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

Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

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.

you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.

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

Jonah Griggs. Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was first.

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.

Sometimes Webb believed that he would never experience a better feeling than when he was looking at her, would never see anything or anybody bursting with more life and spirit. Sometimes he felt he needed to inhale it and place it in a storage area in his soul. Just in case.

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

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.

Comfort zones are overrated. They make you lazy.

...the greatest weapon against big stupid men was a sharp mind.

But you pashed Jonah Griggs and he's the leader of the enemy.

We just have to learn to meet each other halfway okay?

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

Those full of fear were the most dangerous of people.

You've been quiet these past days," Trevanion said. "Are you going to tell me what the...exchange of words was about?" "Who said there was an exchange of words?" Finnikin asked with irritation. "When a woman says 'I hope you fall under your horse' and 'catch your death, then see if I grieve you,'" Perri said, "then there's been an exchange of words." Finnikin glared at him. "In my humble opinion.

If she’s out here and not locked up in the barracks, I’ll know,” he said. He took a deep breath and whistled. “You share a whistle?” Trevanion said in disbelief. “Do you have a problem with that?” Finnikin asked. “I have a few whistles,” Lucian murmured. “Very confusing sometimes.” “Whistles are meant for combat,” Trevanion said. “Not wooing women. Women do not understand whistles.

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

It’s all a bit of a gamble, mate. That’s all I can promise you. And we never get to see what that other life would have looked like if we don’t take chances.

Their bedroom has always been our sanctuary. Sometimes at night we'll end up on their bed just talking. My dad will be snoring and Mia will say, "Turn around, Bobby, you're snoring," and he'll turn around and for a moment it'll be silent. Then he'll erupt into a massive snore and Luca and I will kill ourselves laughing and my dad will wake up and bark, "Get to bed!" and not even a second later he'll be snoring and we'll kill ourselves laughing again and Mia will say, "What is this? Grand Central Station?

Everything's going to be fine. She'll be back at work soon. Let's just keep the house clean." Oh yeah, I want to say, because a clean house will result in peace in the Middle East as well.

Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that's not my flesh and blood after all these years?

As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.

Mama says that satisfaction isn't what I should search for. Respect is. Respect? I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

You shy, Francesca?” Javier asks me later on. I shake my head. “Not really.” I’m just sad, I want to say. And I’m lonely.

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.

If we forget who we lost, then we forget who we once were, and if we forget who we once were, we lose sight of who we are now.

Silence is not just about secrecy, Your Majesty. It is grief and it is shame.

I watch Raffy as she removes the pickles from her hamburger and hands them over to Santangelo without them exchanging a word and I realize again there is more to that relationship than spelling bees and being enemies. These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking.

Do I have to be here to belong to you?' Froi asked. 'Can't I belong to you wherever I am?

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.