John Marsden famous quotes

I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.
-- John Marsden

#Sky #Long #Mountain

We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.
-- John Marsden

#Butterfly #Complaining #Caterpillars

My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.
-- John Marsden

#Memories #Powerful #Imagination

The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.
-- John Marsden

#Friendship #Inspiring Love #Tests

What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.
-- John Marsden

#Hands #Lines #Paper

Some people wake up drowsy. Some people wake up energized. I wake up dead.
-- John Marsden

#Sleep #People #Wake Up

Life's about a hell of a lot more than being happy. It's about feeling the full range of stuff: happiness, sadness, anger, grief, love, hate. If you try to shut one of those off, you shut them all off. I don't want to be happy. I know I won't live happily ever after. I want more than that, something richer. I want to go right up close to the beauty and the ugliness. I want to see it all, know it all, understand it all. The richness and the powerty, the joy and the cruelty, the sweetness and the sadness. That's the best way I can honour my friends who died.
-- John Marsden

#Hate #Grief #Sadness

So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.
-- John Marsden

#Pain #Evil #Suffering

Life's harder, the deeper you feel things, was all I could think as I put the books away. Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they're like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they're a curse.
-- John Marsden

#Book #Thinking #Feelings

There are some things that once you've lost, you never get back. Innocence is one. Love is another. I guess childhood is a third.
-- John Marsden

#Love Is #Childhood #Innocence

My pen.’ Funny, I wrote that without noticing. ‘The torch’, ‘the paper’, but ‘my pen’. That shows what writing means to me, I guess. My pen is a pipe from my heart to the paper. It’s about the most important thing I own.
-- John Marsden

#Mean #Writing #Heart

I feel like I'm dropping such a long way down again." "I seem to be dropping into a cold dark wet place, where no one's been before and noone can every follow. There's no future there; just a past that sometimes fools you into thinking it's the future. It's the most alone place you can ever be and, when you go there, you not only cease to exist in real life, you also cease to exist in their consciousness and in their memories.
-- John Marsden

#Memories #Real #Dark

So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.
-- John Marsden

#People #Different #Stories

It seems like suffering's the only time we can see what's essential. If peace ever comes back I'm making a vow: I'll design myself special glasses. They'll block out whether people are fat or thin or beautiful or weird-looking, whether they have pimples or birthmarks or different coloured skin. They'll do everything suffering's done for us, but without the pain. I'm going to wear those glasses for the rest of my life.
-- John Marsden

#Beautiful #Pain #Block

I can't describe the feeling when I go down - it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There's no caramel anymore.
-- John Marsden

#Beer #Sky #White

A few people would suffer, but a lot of people would be better off.' 'It's just not right,' said Kevin stubbornly. 'Maybe not. But neither's your way of looking at it. There doesn't have to be a right side and a wrong side. both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong...
-- John Marsden

#People #Suffering #Sides

It all began when... they're funny, those words. Everyone uses them, without thinking what they mean. When does anything begin? With everyone it begins when you're born. Or before that, when your parents got married. Or before that, when your parents were born. Or when your ancestors colonised the place. Or when humans came squishing out of the mud and slime, dropped off their flippers and fins, and started to walk. But all the same, all that aside, for what's happened to us there was quite a definite beginning
-- John Marsden

#Mean #Thinking #Parent

...."we saw this big dark red leech hanging off his back. We were dancing round yelling: ‘We’ll burn it off! Get the petrol! Stay still Mr Kassar, you can trust us!’ He wimped out though, and made us use salt. Very boring.
-- John Marsden

#Dark #Yelling #Dancing

Name three types of olives." "Olives! I wouldn't know one type!" "Well, there are three. You can get green ones, you can get black ones, or you can get stuffed.
-- John Marsden

#Names #Black #Olives

Live as though you’ll die tomorrow, but farm as though you’ll live forever.
-- John Marsden

#Motivational #Positive #Happiness

Don't treat people as you think they are, treat them as you think they are capable of becoming.
-- John Marsden

#Thinking #People #Becoming

Silence, always my fortress, sometimes my prison
-- John Marsden

#Silence #Sometimes #Prison

Never cry over anything that can't cry over you
-- John Marsden

#Over You #Cry

Writing is not a job or activity. Nor do I sit at a desk writing for inspiration to strike. Writing is like a different kind of existence. In my life, for some of the time, I am in an alternative world, which I enter through day-dreaming or imagination. That world seems as real to me as the more tangible one of relationships and work, cars and taxes. I don't know that they're much different from each other.
-- John Marsden

#Dream #Jobs #Real

We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.
-- John Marsden

#Teacher #Kids #Two

We'd thought that we were among the first humans to invade this basin, but humans had invaded everything, everywhere. They didn't have to walk into a place to invade it.
-- John Marsden

#Firsts #Walks #Humans

People just sticking names on places, so that no one could see those places properly any more. Every time they looked at them or thought about them the the first thing they saw was a huge big sign saying 'Housing Commission' or 'private school' or 'church' or 'mosque' or 'synagogue'. They stopped looking once they saw those signs.
-- John Marsden

#School #Names #People

the biggest risk is to take no risk. or to take crazy risks.
-- John Marsden

#Crazy #Risk

Light is important to us humans. It influences our moods, our perceptions, our energy levels. A face glimpsed among trees, dappled by the shadows and the green-tinged light reflected from the forest, will seem quite different to the same face seen on a beach in hard, dry, sunlight, or in a darkening room at twilight, with the shadows of a venetian blind striped across it like a convict’s uniform.
-- John Marsden

#Beach #Twilight #Tree

The world was quickly forgetting us. And there was little news to report.
-- John Marsden

#News #World #Littles

When you're scared you can either give in to the panic and let your mind fall apart, or you can take charge of your mind and think brave.
-- John Marsden

#Fall #Thinking #Giving

Life's harder, the deeper you feel things.
-- John Marsden

#Harder #Deeper #Feels

Too much thinking, not enough feeling.
-- John Marsden

#Thinking #Feelings #Too Much

I live in the light, But carry my dark with me.
-- John Marsden

#Dark #Light

Let no stranger intrude here, no invader trespass. This was ours, and this we would defend.
-- John Marsden

#Stranger #Invaders

All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.
-- John Marsden

#Evil #Invention #Vicious

I didn't confess how wrecked I was. Let them keep thinking I was Superwoman if they wanted. I knew the truth.
-- John Marsden

#Thinking #Superwoman #Wanted

Sometimes I got worried that my memory was falling apart.
-- John Marsden

#Memories #Fall #Sometimes

Oh, Homer! You don't have to play dumb anymore! You're not at school now.
-- John Marsden

#School #Play #Dumb

Blame it on Peer Pressure.
-- John Marsden

#Peer Pressure #Peers #Pressure

The dreams now were simply of staying alive.
-- John Marsden

#Dream #Alive #Staying Alive

Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does.
-- John Marsden

#Doe #Way #Guts

There's no room for anything else. You forget that you're tired or cold or hungry. You forget that banged-up knee and your aching tooth. You forget the past, and you forget that there's such a thing as a future.
-- John Marsden

#Tired #Past #Knees

Sometimes I think I'd rather be frightened than bored. At least when you're frightened you know you're alive.
-- John Marsden

#Thinking #Bored #Alive

We’ve got to stick together, that’s all I know. We all drive each other crazy at times, but I don’t want to end up here alone, like the Hermit. Then this really would be Hell. Humans do such terrible things to each other that sometimes my brain tells me they must be evil. But my heart still isn’t convinced. I just hope we can survive.
-- John Marsden

#Crazy #Heart #Evil

They say teenagers can sleep all day. I often used to look at dogs and be amazed by the way they seemed to sleep for twenty hours a day. But I envied them too. It was the kind of lifestyle I could relate to.We didn't sleep for twenty hours, but we gave it our best shot.
-- John Marsden

#Dog #Teenager #Sleep

I knew I was breaking about a dozen laws but I guess I had different attitudes to stuff like that since the war. Laws were for the stupid the immature the irresponsible. The inflexible and the narrow-minded. The prejudiced. The obsessive. The lazy and careless and selfish and spoilt. The violent.
-- John Marsden

#Attitude #Selfish #War

We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy.
-- John Marsden

#Safe #Fantasy #Bigs

Well, I’ve learnt this much: it doesn’t matter what it costs, it’s worth paying the price. You can’t live cheap and you can’t live for nothing. Pay the price and be proud you’ve paid it, that’s what I reckon.
-- John Marsden

#Cost #Proud #Pay

At that age you think boys have as much personality as coat hangers and, you don't notice their looks. Then you grow up.
-- John Marsden

#Growing Up #Thinking #Boys

This is the most complicated relationship since Romeo and Juliet," she complained. "You're both hopeless. I mean, what is the big problem? You love him. He adores you. You get together and live happily ever after. Any questions? No, of course not. That'll be ten dollars, thank you.
-- John Marsden

#Mean #Together #Complicated Relationship

I wonder if they realize how much I notice about them They probably haven't a clue because I never look at them or show the slightest interest. But I'm very aware of everything. I remember seeing an old film once where a father says to his son: "Son when your mouth's open you're not learning anything." If that's true then I'm well on the way to becoming the world's wisest woman.
-- John Marsden

#Father #Son #World

Pale as ice you passed me by; I wondered what you really felt, And waited through the changing times, To see if you would one day melt. I thought that ice would melt with warmth, But there were thing I did not know: The sun can touch the outer layers But does not reach the deepest snow. Winter sometimes seems like years, Summer's sometimes far away, But winter always turns to summer, As surely as does night to day.
-- John Marsden

#Summer #Winter #Night

If you added up all the really significant episodes in your life they'd probably come to less than sixty minutes.
-- John Marsden

#Significant #Episodes #Minutes

Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.
-- John Marsden

#Time Spent

The Bible just said ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath.
-- John Marsden

#Hero #People #Becoming

It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.
-- John Marsden

#Thinking #Mind #Changing Your Mind