Melina Marchetta Quotes

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

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

I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven't. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don't want to leave it, others because the world around them won't let them in.

~ Melina Marchetta

He could hardly breathe at the though of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

I remember passion.

~ Melina Marchetta

...I don't believe you should be a virgin when you get married,' Sera said. 'You should experiment. Men do''Yes, but only if you're in love with them,' I said.

~ Melina Marchetta

What about the contacts your mum had?” his dad asked.“I rang and spoke to four very polite computers who gave me all these options and then cut out on me. Then I tried the post office, because they were advertising, and I spoke to another computer. Very rude, that one. Don’t think it recognized ‘Are you shitting me?’ as an option.”“You know why that is?”“Why is that, Dominic?” Tom had asked drolly, because he knew he was going to be told why.“Because we don’t live in a society anymore, Tom. We live in an economy. We’re not citizens. We’re customers. That’s what this government’s done to us.

~ Melina Marchetta

A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.

~ Melina Marchetta

People divulge things to you that they would not divulge to anyone else.

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he's muffling it, but I can hear and I want someone to come over and jab her with a sedative because its pitch pierces my soul.

~ Melina Marchetta

They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.

~ Melina Marchetta

Do not cry,” she said fiercely, but her own tears flowed. “Do not cry, Finnikin. For if we begin, our tears will never end.

~ Melina Marchetta

The boy in the tree sobs uncontrollably when I tell him about the Hermit and my mother, yet his eyes light up each time I mention Hannah. And every single time he asks, “Taylor, what about the Brigadier who came searching for you that day? Whatever became of him?” I try to explain that the Brigadier is of no importance to my story, but he always shakes his head as if he knows better.

~ Melina Marchetta

Each day, at the same time, Jude would return and they would be there, led by Webb, whose life could not have been more different than his. Where Webb's memories of childhood were idyllic and earthy, Jude's reeked of indifference. Webb read fantasy; Jude read realism. Webb believed a tree house was the perfect place for gaining a different perspective on the world; Jude saw it as perfect for surveillance and working out who or what was a threat to them. They argued about sport codes and song lyrics. Jude saw the rain-dirty valley; Webb saw Brigadoon. Yet, despite all this, they connected, and the nights they spent in the tree house discussing their brave new worlds and not so brave emotions made everything else in their lives insignificant. Somehow the world of Webb and Fitz and Tate and Narnie became the focus of Jude's life.

~ Melina Marchetta

Simple dreams are the hardest to come true

~ Melina Marchetta

How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?

~ Melina Marchetta

Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.

~ Melina Marchetta

I need voices of reason and of hysteria and of empathy. I need to have an Alanis moment. I need advice from Elizabeth Bennett. I need Tim Tams and comfort food.

~ Melina Marchetta

I miss the Stella girls telling me what I am. That I'm sweet and placid and accommodating and loyal and nonthreatening and good to have around. And Mia. I want her to say, Frankie, you're silly, you're lazy, you're talented, you're passionate, you're restrained, you're blossoming, you're contrary.I want to be an adjective again. But I'm a noun. A nothing. A nobody. A no one.

~ Melina Marchetta

If you close your eyes, you get to control your own darkness.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

God knows what possessed me, but having that science book in my hand propelled me to immediate action. So I hit her with it.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

Tom always did anger well. Hid it well, but showed it even better

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

You can't go around feeling too much.

~ Melina Marchetta

Maybe memories should be left the way they are.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

Sometimes you don't let us talk about how we're feeling. If we feel scared, you say, 'Nothing to worry about, guys,' but that doesn't make it go away. It makes it grow.

~ Melina Marchetta