Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 12

In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle. I just didn’t expect to end up with the chicken.
Richard Flanagan
There is an aesthetic dimension to virtue. In real life, as opposed to in celluloid, we are attracted to the good and repelled by the bad. Even the woman who says she prefers the archetypal 'bad boy' probably doesn't actually like it when he is bad toward her.
John Dickson
Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.
Richard Flanagan
Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.
Thomas Keneally
Nature is gendered, but not sexist.
Janine Burke
This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world's religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social sciences.
Sheila Jeffreys
The scope of the transgender empire may be reaching its peak, as transcriticism is increasing at a fast pace both within activist feminism and from wives and regretters. There is an increasing groundswell of criticism of the concept and practice of transgenderism from a newly invigorated radical feminist movement. Moreover, the idea of transgenderism has become so vague and general that the category is in danger of being exploded.
Sheila Jeffreys
Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status.
Sheila Jeffreys
Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.
Sheila Jeffreys
A sociocultural environment is not some cunningly contrived thing only exists in social psychology labs. Don't look now, but you're in one right this moment.
Cordelia Fine
I never knew words could be so sharp, until the wrong ones cut me
Foz Meadows
As has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.
Cordelia Fine
She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to challenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Com on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It's too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder.
Mark O'Flynn
The idea of a character dichotomy between women and men has been overwhelmingly, decisively, refuted. The broad psychological similarity of men and women as groups can be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences.
Raewyn W. Connell
No doubt the female self and the male self can be as useful as any other social identity in the right circumstances. But flexible, context-sensitive, and useful is not the same as “hardwired”.
Cordelia Fine
There was some rhythm, some ecstasy in this dance of flight that expressed the fact that happiness which touches depths and rises beyond physical confines is as old as consciousness, yet ever renewed, and is like the glorying flight of the birds
Elyne Mitchell
The waltz was the only way a young couple could touch one another, and even through gloves I could feel the heat of your grandfather's touch,'she'd tell Luc, with a wicked glimmer in her eye.
Fiona McIntosh
Where life used to feel overcrowded, it now feels boundless as the sky. Where I used to feel shackled, I am now free to dance.
Narissa Doumani
A rationalization a day keeps your conscience at bay.
Anthony O'Neill
Geniuses are their own saviors.
Anthony O'Neill
Surround yourself with people who move you, motivate you and mobilize you.
Tony Curl
There are no wastelands in our landscape quite like those we've created ourselves.
Tim Winton
Destroying the joint means building a new system in which it is not OK to allow people to be marginalised, exploited and discriminated against, it's not OK to ignore the needs of future generations, it's not OK to wreck this extraordinary, beautiful, fragile planetary environment that sustains us - our Mother Earth.
Christine Milne
As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population. While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute...[t]hat, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialised nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return. When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason...for a plant based diet.
Peter Singer
A list of things you might not hear: eylash opening on the pillow, the appearance of a star, a leaf leaving a tree, a hand in your hair, a lie being withheld, a tear's journey from eye to shoe, air becoming blue, longing.
Martine Murray
Eraritjaritjaka albutjikaNkinjaba iturala albutjika ...His heart is filled with longing to turn for homeIn the heat of the sun to return home ...'Ulamba chant, Aboriginal Central Australia
Stuart Rintoul
A person tends to believe whatever is repeated over and over, whether it is true or not.
Nikki Sex
Rudy handed it back. "Speaking of which, I think we're both slightly in for it when we get home. You especially.""Why me?""You know- your mama.""What about her?" Liesel was exercising the blatant right of every person who's ever belonged to a family. It's all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won't let anyone else do it. That's when you get your back up and show loyalty.
Markus Zusak
Peter was now standing very close - as if he wanted to comfort me - as if he knew how hurt I felt that Mrs Knowles had not asked me to play or to sing. And I did feel comforted. It was as if a tide of warmth was carrying me out of myself, inclining me to trust him and to conduct myself well.
Jennifer Paynter
This made my father laugh. 'Mary made a cake, did she? Well, well. Better that than she should make a cake for herself, I suppose.'Peter then burst out: 'Why must you always be making a game of Mary? 'Tis not fair; 'tis not sporting.
Jennifer Paynter
If I had a talent I could claim, it would be as a finder of trouble. Which is undoubtedly what I'd find by sticking my nose where it had no right to be. But would I let a thought of trouble stop me? Not a snowflake's chance in hell.
Keri Arthur
Cleverness is a false presumption', Doc had explained, 'it is like being a natural skater, you are so busy doing tricks to impress that you do not see where the thin ice is and before you know, poof! You are in deep, ice-cold water frozen like a dead herring. Intelligence is a harder gift, for this you must work, you must practise it, challenge it and maybe towards the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow whereas intelligence is the substance.
Bryce Courtenay
In suiting the action to the words, however, I perceived that the stars were all wrong.That was my undoing. I had looked up unthinkingly, anticipating the familiar, and, finding it gone, began to cry like a baby. Whereupon Peter stopped the gig and took me in his arms, kissing me so that my face was soon sore both from kissing and crying.
Jennifer Paynter
I found I could listen without envy to Letty's singing, and afterwards when the applause came, I did not mind that Mrs Knowles was heaping praises upon her. Peter's hands were on my chair, and when I leaned back I could feel them against my shoulders.
Jennifer Paynter
I've tried praying. It gives me comfort. But not as much as a cup of tea and a ginger nut biscuit.
Steven Herrick
Dream about things that envelop your being like a comfortable blanket.
Truth Devour
I don't think I fully appreciated how relaxing it is having someone I can be really mean to. It's going to be so hard being nice all the time.
Fiona Wood
Tell me all of the things that make you feel at ease
Troye Sivan
I wanted to soothe and comfort her, the way she had comforted her daughters.
A.B. Shepherd
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
The basic human craving is for meaning.
Colin Argyle Thomson
If you commit yourself to living according to His Word your potential will be unlocked, and in time, what may look small now will grow into something significant.
Christine Caine
Each day is filled with promise, potential and possibility.
Tony Curl
Women were the very devil, at the mercy of their frail strength.
Margaret Way
I just want you to know, I will not be falling slave to your devil dick and demon tongue. No matter how good they are.
Kylie Scott
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Jack Heath
I'm a Cynster--I've been raised to acquire, defend, and protect. My family is the core of my existence--without a family, without children, I'd have nothing to protect, no reason to acquire.
Stephanie Laurens
If dragons were real, then in all likelihood they were not graceful, high-chested, noble creatures; rather they would have been dirty, ugly, reptilian and mean.
Matthew Reilly
It seems to me that the good lord in his infinate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable- hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these was dogs.
Robyn Davidson
She was the one who wanted to be with him, the one who watched and waited for him, who felt his absence badly.
Sonya Hartnett
No man can see himself unless he borrows the eyes of a friend
Colin Higgins
It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.
Markus Zusak
(from a prayer for inclusiveness):O god whose face changes as we move and learn and change, whose image becomes less like ours and more like that of the stranger we treat as a friend; the god whom we create from the sum of all we know that is wonderful, generous, true and wise: May we see ourselves in the god-ness of others and ourselves in their image of you.
Bronwyn Angela White
I want out of this place.With no reminders."It stings -sulphur tearsin cinnamon rain.
Emma Cameron
Dad and I leave town in the early dark. It's the second Sunday of the holidays, and we pack up the old blue car with enough clothes for summer and hit the road. It's so early he's wiping hills of sand piled in the corners of his eyes. I wipe a few tears from mine. Tears don't pile, though. They grip and cling and slide in salty trails that I taste until the edge of the city.
Cath Crowley
I've wept enough in my life. I have no tears left.
Melina Marchetta
Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.
Garth Nix
This meaning-argument is of a very different kind from the arguments I have been speaking about so far. The premise entails the conclusion all right, but it is so astoundingly false that it defies criticism, at first, by the simple method of taking the reader's breath away. This was a method which the neo-Hegelian idealists later perfected: reasoning from a sudden and violent solecism. Say or imply, for example, that in English “value” means the same as “individuality.” You can be miles down the track of your argument before they get their breath back. This method is not only physiologically but ethologically sound. Of course it should never be used first. You need first to earn the respect of your readers, by some good reasoning, penetrating observations, or the like: then apply the violent solecism. Tell them, for example, that when we say of something that it is a prime number, we mean that it was born out of wedlock. You cannot go wrong this way. Decent philosophers will be so disconcerted by this, that they will never do the one thing they should do: simply say, “That is NOT what ‘prime number’ means!” Instead, they will always begin … [by] casting about for an excuse for someone’s saying what you said, or a half-excuse, or a one-eighth excuse; nor is there any danger that they will search in vain.
David Stove
Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral.
Geraldine Brooks
A gut full of heroin and the looming possibility of bunking in an overcrowded cell in Kerobokan to await my death makes you feel a bit sorry for some of the things you've done.
S.A. Tawks