Melina Marchetta Quotes

You blame me for this, don't you?" he says."I don't need to. You're doing a better job.
Melina Marchetta
Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian’s mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds.
Melina Marchetta
City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.
Melina Marchetta
And we all end up where we started
Melina Marchetta
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
One of Sir Topher's rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.
Melina Marchetta
Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.
Melina Marchetta
Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.
Melina Marchetta
I trace his face with my fingers, 'Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn't for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. He is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. It doesn't get any more romantic than that, Jonah.
Melina Marchetta
Why question what Froi of Lumatere was doing here?' he asked.' When you should be questioning what would have happened to Charyn if he hadn't been here. Who else would have saved Gargarin of Abroi from the street lords? … 'Who would have saved Quintana of Charyn from hanging? Who would have rescued her from Tariq of Lascow's compound? Who would have sent her to a safe place to birth the cursebreaker? Blah, blah, blah. I'm bored now,' Finnikin said, looking around.
Melina Marchetta
Imagine the state of one's mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Lights and noise and strangeness. It's no wonder we scream with terror at our birth.
Melina Marchetta
It’s not as if he’s good-looking, because he’s not. Sometimes he’s so plain that he looks bland. But it’s his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter.
Melina Marchetta
Even five minutes of your time can make someone’s day,
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
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
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
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
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
Promise me you'll never stop dreaming.
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
I've wept enough in my life. I have no tears left.
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
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
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 cry""then what?"it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower."i cried"luca 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
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
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
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
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
Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder.
Melina Marchetta
If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one's worth came from others.
Melina Marchetta
I determine my own worth. If I had to rely on others, I'd have lain down and died waiting.
Melina Marchetta
But Froi looked around with wonder. As if he had never seen the world from up so high before.
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I'm scared to die," I whispered as Michael walked in."He was scared to live," he said kissing my forehead.
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
If there was one weapon he had against these savages, it was not acknowledging their existence.
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
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
He took my hand, made me stand on the branch and asked, "What can you see from here?" "Nothing" I said,"Know what I can see? From this distance everything is so bloody perfect".
Melina Marchetta
When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord.
Melina Marchetta
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
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
He's my father!" she bellowed, pointing to Trevanion."Vestie!" Beatriss said firmly, stopping to stare up at her. "I'll snip at the tongue if I ever see it in such a way again! Trevanion, speak to her."Vestie hung her head, shamefaced."Vestie," he said, his voice still gentle."Yes, Father.""Shout it out louder, my love. Shout it out louder.
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
Maybe memories should be left the way they are.
Melina Marchetta
You can't go around feeling too much.
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