Melina Marchetta famous quotes

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Love #Pain #People

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

#Father #Two #Hundred

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Depression #Mother #Baby

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Fragments #Worst

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

#Goes On #Strange #Kind

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

#Fighting #Cities #People

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Memories #Filth #Spirit

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

#Doors #Next #Worst

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Eye #Cutting #Feet

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Flying #Noses #Next

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Peers #Groups #Weak

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?
-- Melina Marchetta

#Grieving #Pages #Faces

...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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Kind #Beam

We were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors," she told him once. "I was paper and she was rock so I lived and she died.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Rocks #Paper #Scissors

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Medicine #Hug #Realizing

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Character #Writing #Self

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Humility #Awkward #Looks

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Sleep #Thinking

Trevanion wrapped his arm around his son's neck like shepherd's hook and dragged him along playfully. when he let go, Finnikin thought he would have liked his father to hold on a moment longer.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Letting Go #Father #Son

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Thinking #Light #Long

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Thinking #Hands #Knowing

And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die. But there's a joy and an abundance of everything, like information and laughter and summer weather and so many stories. My mother urges me to write them down because, "You're the last of the Markhams, my love." So I record dates and journeys and personalities and traits and heroes and losers and weaknesses and strengths and I try to capture every one of those people because one day I'll need what they had to offer.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Summer #Mother #Laughter

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Mother #Home #Differences

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#School #Trying #Stories

Oh, you're one of those,' the princess said. 'One of what?' 'One of those who needs to be told their worth over and over by others. Do you know who tells me my worth, Phaedra of Alonso?' The princess pointed a hard finger at her own chest. 'Me. I determine my own worth. If I had to rely on others I'd have lain down and died waiting.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Princess #Waiting #Down And

Woman, I’m trying to fight here! Or has that escaped your attention?
-- Melina Marchetta

#Fighting #Trying #Attention

It's not that I like you least [...] it's that I feared you most. The reginita taught me to like you. There was a strange joy to her that lifted my spirits. But you, Quintana of Charyn, you made me love you.
-- Melina Marchetta

#I Like You #Love You #Joy

What were you doing with her?" I ask quietly. "Apart from questioning her about your whereabouts, I was listening to the most intriguing story about my life moonlighting as a kidnapper.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Listening #Stories #Intriguing

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Children #Mean #People

Someone asked us later, "Didn't you wonder why no one came across you sooner?" Did I wonder? When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they're some kind of garbage, don't you know? Wonder dies.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Parent #Black #Bags

Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?
-- Melina Marchetta

#Our Words #Language #Lost

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

#Medicine

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

#Thinking #People #Feels

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

#Past #May #Pieces

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Want #Littles #Way

And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Running #Love You #People

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Good Day #Bad Day #Four

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Mean #Thinking #Care

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Taken #Eye

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Names #Giving

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Home #Voice #Broken

So why would I want someone to be my everything when one day they might not be around?" Jellicoe Road
-- Melina Marchetta

#One Day #Might #Want

I want to tell him that deep down each time Hannah looked at him she was grateful it was him because Jude did something that the others didn't. He came back for her.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Grateful #Want #Taylor Markham

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Thinking #Hands #Ideas

Everything is evil that humans can't control or conquer
-- Melina Marchetta

#Evil #Conquer #Humans

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

#So Sad

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Real #Princess #Eye

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

#Thinking #People #Doe

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

#Thinking #Personality #Care

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Kindness #Way #Cadets

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!
-- Melina Marchetta

#Stupid #Night #Thinking

Memory is a funny thing. It tricks you into believing that you've forgotten important moments, and then when you're raking your brain for a bit of information that might make sense of something else, it taps you on the head and says, "Remember when you told me to put that memory in the green rubbish bin? Well, I didn't, I put it in the black recycling tub, and it's coming your way again.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Memories #Believe #Funny Things

Your friends are at the house.' I sit up, straight. 'Who'? 'I don't know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.' 'Siobhan?' 'And another one who's making cups of tea for everyone, and keeping the boy who's telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he's "the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste".' 'Justine, Thomas and Tara.' And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm and the Trombal boy's rung about ten times. I don't like his manner on the phone.' 'You won't like any guy's manner on the phone.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Father #Boys

What kind of freak is this kid who's giggling hysterically with the girls in the neighbouring beds, each with a crush on the other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Crush #Kids

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Baby #Jesus #Phones

The idea that God works in mysterious ways is rubbish. There’s nothing mysterious about his ways. They’re premeditated and slightly conniving, and they place you in an impossible situation.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Ideas #Way #Rubbish

It's my birthday today. I'm not 17 anymore. The 17 Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth. But what she failed to mention is that you keep on learning truths after 17 and I want to keep on learning truths till the day I die.
-- Melina Marchetta

#My Birthday #Want #Today

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

#School #Over It

No. But it's like the argument `don't donate to third-world countries because the money mightn't get to them.' People only say that because it makes them feel better about the fact that they do nothing.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Country #Feel Better #People

I think I'm a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven't a care in the world. Like I'm fearless. Like I used to be.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Thinking #Fearless

I love it when you're demented like this.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Demented

Sometimes you look at me and it's like all the bullshit gets stripped off and I'm left with what's underneath and I kind of like what I see. Someone who actually fails. Someone who has absolutely no self-control. Someone who says real ***** things like 'this is complicated.' I like that part of me, you know. I like the fact that I know I can't control you or how I feel about you and that doesn't freak me out.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Real #Self #Bullshit

I think you'll just have to wait for that Loser of the Month tiara a little while longer while I wear it, with pride, around my neighborhood.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Pride #Thinking #Waiting

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

#Journey #Differences #Jellicoe Road

So apart from writing letters home to your fantasy girlfriends,"Ben says, walking backwards, "what do you guys do out here without television and phones?" "Men's business. Bit confidential," Griggs says patronisingly. "Wow, wish I were you," Ben says, shaking his head with mock regret. "All I'll be doing tonight is hanging out in Taylor's bedroom, lying on her bed, sharing my earphones with her, hoping she won't hog all the room because it's such a tiny space.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girlfriend #Regret #Lying

We're an Ag college," I explain to them. "Not as good as the one in Yanco but we have livestock." "Cows?" Anson Choi asks, covering his nose. "Pigs, too. And horses. Great for growing tomatoes. The Cadets are wanna-be soldiers. City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure. "I'm going to throw up," one of the guys says. "Don't feel too bad," I explain. "Some of our lot did while they were laying out this stuff. Actually, right there where you're standing.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Horse #Fighting #College

Coffee?" Santangelo calls down to us. We both look up. He,Ben, and Raffy are hanging over the side. "Is it espresso?" Anson Choi asks behind us. "Freshly percolated," Ben answers. "You should see the gadgets they have up here." Anson Choi aims a begging look at Griggs. "You want to sell out over a coffee?" Griggs asks him with disgust. "They've got muffins as well," I tell them. "Double chocolate chip. His mum made them." Griggs gets up and holds out a hand to me. "Truce.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Coffee #Hands #Espresso

Sometimes Thomas Mackee will stick an earphone into my ear and ask me to listen to a song. When I get over the revulsion of putting something in my ear that's been in his, I sit back and let the music take over, and for a half hour there's something comforting about someone's heart beating at the same rhythm as mine.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Song #Heart #Comforting

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Hate #Feelings #Way

One day" came. Because finally I understood.
-- Melina Marchetta

#One Day #Understood

We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot." "Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Stupid #Intellectual #Different

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

#Kissing #Scared #Said

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Falling In Love #Book #People

And we all end up where we started
-- Melina Marchetta

#Ends

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Children #Warrior #Law

How seven days had passed since she had disappeared from existence. That it would take the eyes of the gods to find her. Or the heart of the Lumateran exile.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Eye #Heart #Seven

And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. (...) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing." "Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie. "You being on that platform changed mine.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Lying #Eye #Thinking

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Men #Common Sense #Mouths

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Home #Thinking

Play me something that makes me feel; This soul inside me is made of steel. Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating And, babe, I need you to make things real. Walk inside me without silence, Kill the past and change the tense. Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring; Take me places that make more sense.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Real #Heart #Past

But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Selfish #Grief #Grieving

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Beautiful #Girl #Hands

I don't despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life. Not to mend my broken bones, Arjuro. I needed my brother to mend my broken spirit.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Brother #Broken #Spirit

Everything hurts, every single thing including the weight of him and I'm crying because it hurts and he's telling me he's sorry over and over again, and I figure somewhere down the track we'll work out the right way of doing this but I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being a part of him. Because being a part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Letting Go #Hurt #Sorry

For reasons he couldn’t understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #Sadness #Eye

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Cutting #Trying #Wicked

Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. "That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Cousin #Powerful #Heart

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

#Grief #Silence #Majesty

This isn't romance. This isn't a declaration of love or affirmation of friendship. This is something more.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Romance #Affirmation #Declaration

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

#Fire #Fruitcake

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Girl #House #Guy

Between now and when we graduate next year there are at least ten weeks' holiday and five random public holidays. There's email and if you manage to get down to the town, there's text messaging and mobile phone calls. If not, the five minutes you get to speak to me on your communal phone is better than nothing. There are the chess nerds who want to invite you to our school for the chess comp next March and there's this town in the middle, planned by Walter Burley Griffin, where we can meet up and protest against our government's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty." -Jonah Griggs
-- Melina Marchetta

#School #Holiday #Phones

I'll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself...I'll run to be emancipated.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Running #Thinking #One Day

He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Tough Times #Proud #Week

You can know someone all your life, like your parents or family, but I’ll tell you this, Ned. There’s an expression on their face, or a tone in their voice, or a way they walk, that you’ve never ever seen before. Like they’ve kept it hidden. Until their brother dies. Or their son. I remember those days and they were like these strangers and I wanted to say, Who are you people?
-- Melina Marchetta

#Brother #Son #Expression

Come here,” she says. “No, you come here.” “I said it first.” “Rock paper scissors.” “No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.” Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Winning #Hands #Snakes

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
-- Melina Marchetta

#Father #Half #Towns

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.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Promise #Chance #Take A Chance

The music department is going to do a musical next year," he tells me, rolling his eyes like I would. Justine is running toward me, and I can tell by the look on her face that she's found out about the musical, too. I sigh, shaking my head. "I have to give Justine a lesson in holding back," I tell him. "She's just way too enthusiastic". She grabs my arms in excitement. "We're doing Les Mis." I scream hysterically, clutching her as we jump up and down.
-- Melina Marchetta

#Running #Eye #Years

Someone had to be blamed. Someone had to die. (...) What you can't understand, you destroy.
-- Melina Marchetta