Quotes by Australian Authors

Most of life is routine-dull and grubby, but routine is the mountain that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
Ben Nicholas
Sneakiness was a form of privacy and privacy here was the first loss.
Joan London
Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.
Nevil Shute
… I wonder why she hasn't spread the tale.""The only reason she would not is if she is ill or the story would somehow reflect badly on herself," replied Lady Badgery. "Otherwise, Portia Troutbridge has never been known to keep a scandal to herself.""Oh, I do hope she is ill!" exclaimed Truthful. "I mean, only just ill enough to keep the news quiet for a little longer. Is that too dreadful of me?""Not at all," announced Lady Badgery. "It is a very reasonable desire. In the case of Portia Troutbridge I myself would wish for something much more severe. Scarlet fever, perhaps. Or the plague.
Garth Nix
Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.
Steve Toltz
We had a teacher called Fanny Menlove, and I remember once when she was out of the room Nancy went up to the blackboard and wrote it backward - Menlove Fanny - and we all fell around laughing. She got into big trouble, but she didn't seem to mind. She had no fear.
Peter FitzSimons
She had six months at most left to live. She had cancer, she hissed. A filthy growth eating her insides away. There was an operation, she'd been told. They took half your stomach out and fitted you up with a plastic bag. Better a semicolon than a full stop, some might say.
Helen Hodgman
She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant
Peter Carey
Cancer though, it was a fickle friend that didn't care about your age, gender or race. It would move in take up residence and eventually kick you to the curb, it was a mean landlord and didn't care who it hurt in order to get what it wanted.
Ella Frank
There is general agreement that red meat consumption increases the risk of colon or colorectal cancer. This was the only food association with cancer that was labeled ‘‘convincing’’ in the recent report from the World Cancer Research Fund, American Institute for Cancer Research (42). The evidence, of course, largely came from studies of meat consumption in nonvegetarians, although data from Adventist vegetarians in California concur (43).
Gary E. Fraser
People's most common regret was living the life others expected of them, rather than having the courage to live a life true to themselves, and realising some dreams had gone unfulfilled as a result.
Bianca Nogrady
Look forward, not back," the Hag said. "All is change. Do not regret. Instead, learn.
Juliet Marillier
You'd think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery - so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me - only depresses me more. I plod on feeling confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise.
Sarah Turnbull
Whenever my mum gets depressed about her age, she goes to Paris.
Jane Tara
Ingo was a fever, and so far she hadn't found the antidote.
Margaret Way
Nobody's bought this land. And no one's going to want it either. It's dying land, lonely land.""Like me, then," I said."Yes, like you." You chewed the corner of your lip. "You both need saving.
Lucy Christopher
Is it love, obsession, infatuation? You don't know. You think of a strange and beautiful word you read about once, Limerance, a psychological term, meaning an obsessive love, a state that's almost like a drug. Need like a wolf paces the perimeter of your world, back and forth, back and forth, never letting up. ...You're appalled by the new appetites within you, kicking their feet and clawing to get out.
Nikki Gemmell
All right, you caught me. I'm secretly obsessed with you and spend all my free time writing about you in my journal. 'Dear Diary, today Will was an ass for the 467th day in a row. He's so dreamy
Elizabeth Scott
No matter how entertaining, diverse, concise, or detailed, a writing craft book is, it’s not going to work magic on you, it’s not going to suddenly make you a brilliant writer simply by reading it. You need to use what you read and learn in your own writing. Because that’s when you have those AHA moments. That's when it really sticks.
Jessica Bell
Writing is my oxygen. Music is my carbon dioxide.
Jessica Bell
The best lie is the one that has an element of truth, so it’s good to include something real in your fiction.
Renee Conoulty
You'll like it less when you hear what they've been building. It's a big raised platform at the end of the square about two metres above the ground, with steps running up to it.''Like a stage?' Erak suggested. 'Maybe they're going to put on a play.''Or an execution,' Horace said.
John Flanagan
Nice enough?” he asked, tendons tightening in his neck like he intended to Hulk out on me. “Did you just call my kiss ‘nice enough’?
Kylie Scott
I thought that one was going to hit me,” I said, watching the disappointed girl stalk off into the crowd. “Being your girlfriend is dangerous.” “What can I say? I’m a magnificent specimen of manhood. Of course they all want me. But I do appreciate you protecting my honor.
Kylie Scott
Oh, yeah. You're the best," I grinned back at him."Pumpkin, hello. Of course I am!
Kylie Scott
Pumpkin, stop rubbing your ass against me. We gotta go! I don’t have time to do you now. Prioritize, woman.
Kylie Scott
This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.
M.L Stedman
You blame me for this, don't you?" he says."I don't need to. You're doing a better job.
Melina Marchetta
You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.
Julian Assange
Provide a safe place for people to be their 100% self, this world is already guarded and fearful, trained to keep walls up and throw away the keys. A harden heart is no pure reality and for too long, we have all stood to allow it; so instead of excusing mimisfortune, let's bathe eachother in compassion and grow beyond what we've been taught
Nikki Rowe
My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum.
Max Barry
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
Gennia is eating and talking to Ruiz on the phone. Each time he takes a mouthful, he catches a whiff of his shirt, which stinks of failure and yesterday.
Michael Robotham
Raz was one of those vanguard human beings of indeterminate ethnicity, the magnificent mutts that I hope we are all destined to become given another millennium of intermixing. His skin was a rich pecan color from his dad, who was part African American and part native Hawaiian. His hair, straight and glossy black, and the almond shape of his eyes came from his Japanese grandmother. But their color was the cool blue he'd inherited from his mum, a Swedish windsurfing champion.
Geraldine Brooks
Don't hold on too long;to which does not belong, Don't shed a tear; for all the pain that's gone,Create a new;from the wisdom of the past, Open your heart wider, as storms do not last.
Nikki Rowe
No matter what circumstances we might face in life, it is possible for us to overcome in the midst of them by taking hold of God’s thoughts.
Christine Caine
In photographs taken from the sky, cities resembled circuit boards. It was no surprise, really, that there were sparky misfirings, dangerous connections. Even traffic, Alice concluded, set up a kind of static in the air, let loose vibrations and uncontainable agitation. Freighted with more than they could absorb, with city intentions, citizens moved in designs of inexplicable purpose.
Gail Jones
Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity.
Germaine Greer
Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it for it is a faculty of the psyche.
Germaine Greer
Fair words butter no parsnips.
John Clarke
There is nothing enduring in life for a woman except what she builds in a man's heart.
Judith Anderson
Most women still need a room of their own and the only way to find it may be outside their own home.
Germaine Greer
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm you'll never enjoy the sunshine.
Morris West
The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again.
George Miller
Behind every successful man there's a lot of unsuccessful years.
Bob Brown
Freedom means choosing your burden.
Hephzibah Menuhin
Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.
Shirley Hazzard
It may be bizarre but in my opinion science offers a sure path to God and religion.
Paul Davies
The only causes of regret are laziness outbursts of temper hurting others prejudice jealousy and envy.
Germaine Greer
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do what experience tells you to do and what your nerves let you do.
Bruce Crampton
My father instilled in me that if you don't see things happening the way you want them to you get out there and make them happen.
Susan Powter
If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia-I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.
Nellie Melba
A full bosom is actually a millstone around a woman's neck. ... [Breasts] are not parts of a person but lures slung around her neck to be kneaded and twisted like magic putty or mumbled and mouthed like lolly ices.
Germaine Greer
The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.
Colleen McCullough
Most of life is routine-dull and grubby but routine is the mountain that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
Ben Nicholas
It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny
Youth troubles over eternity age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.
Dame Mary Gilmore
Rivers and rocks and trees have always been talking to us but we've forgotten how to listen.
Michael Roads
The only causes of regret are laziness outbursts of temper hurting others prejudice jealousy and envy.
Germaine Greer
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do what experience tells you to do and what your nerves let you do.
Bruce Crampton