Melina Marchetta Quotes

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?

~ Melina Marchetta

When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

If there was one weapon he had against these savages, it was not acknowledging their existence.

~ Melina Marchetta

In an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life, like when he was a kid and he first heard the sound of horses clip-clopping and he asked his mother in wonder, What's that sound, because I've never heard it before?

~ Melina Marchetta

I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said.Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to parts of him he believed to be dormant. And then she winked.'Did I do that right?' she asked. Her smile was lopsided and he saw a glimpse of the teeth.And Froi imagined that he would follow her to the ends of the earth.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for.He wished that he had never met any of them.

~ Melina Marchetta

As he left Yata’s home that morning, he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams. For a moment he allowed himself to feel regret at the thought of never building a cottage by the river with Trevanion. Or living the life of a simple farmer connected to the earth. Or traveling his kingdom, satisfying the nomad he had become. To be Finnikin of the Rock and the Monts and the River and the Flatlands and the Forest. To be none of those at all.Yet he also knew that to lose her to another man would be a slow torture every day for the rest of his life.

~ Melina Marchetta

But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I'm tired and the feeling that I've had for a while-that something is haunting me down-becomes all consuming and I'm frightened that one morning there will be not enough to keep me going.

~ Melina Marchetta

If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she'd never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.

~ Melina Marchetta

The pages aren't numbered, so I don't know whether I have the beginning or end or whether it's in sequence but these days I'm not really looking for continuity.All I'm after is something that makes sense to me.

~ Melina Marchetta

It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.

~ Melina Marchetta

I hope you're not smoking in front of her,' Lucia says to him.'Yeah, I lie in bed and puff in her face, Lucia,' he says, irritated.

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

I met this boy here who I knew as a kid and his mum left him with a pedophile for two weeks when he was eight years old and I'm presuming you know everything there is to know about Jonah's father, and that my father is dead, and my mother hasn't been around for years, and God knows Jessa's real story. So what I'm saying here, Sergeant, is that we're just a tad low on the reliable adult quota so you have no right to be all self-righteous about what Chaz did and if you're going to go around not talking to him when his only crime was wanting me to have what he has, then I think you're going to turn out to be a bit of a dud and you know something? I'm just a bit over life's little disappointments right now. Do you understand what I'm saying?

~ Melina Marchetta

I hear Mr. Palmer tell Hannah that it was an electrical fault. Five arsonists in one school and it ends up being something so technically boring.

~ Melina Marchetta

But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile.

~ Melina Marchetta

But Froi looked around with wonder. As if he had never seen the world from up so high before.

~ Melina Marchetta

I determine my own worth. If I had to rely on others, I'd have lain down and died waiting.

~ Melina Marchetta

If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one's worth came from others.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I've never really heard what a sex god sounds like, I can't verify that.

~ Melina Marchetta

And won’t he grow up to be the healthiest of young men, all because she kept him safe? Ready for the world. Ready to one day conquer it. To travel. Get on a train. Go to work. Get blown out of her life.Maybe she should be having that glass of wine and cigarette after all.

~ Melina Marchetta

Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.

~ Melina Marchetta

she could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear.it wasn't her he mutters after a moment.sorry? tom says.she didn't crythen what?it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower.i criedluca bursts out laughing beside will.yeah, well i did will says. And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.

~ Melina Marchetta

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.

~ Melina Marchetta

At times it's like sadness has planted itself on her face, refusing to leave, an overwhelming sadness, and sometimes I see despair there, too.

~ Melina Marchetta

I've wept enough in my life. I have no tears left.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

Promise me you'll never stop dreaming.

~ Melina Marchetta

I'd run you know. It's like when you're really busy doing something and you don't have time to think about things. Well, I'd run and run and run so I couldn't think.

~ Melina Marchetta

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

~ Melina Marchetta

This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.

~ Melina Marchetta

The gods whispered to you once, Finnikin. And you listened. But they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals.

~ Melina Marchetta

She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That's the difference between us and the others.

~ Melina Marchetta

Even five minutes of your time can make someone’s day

~ Melina Marchetta