Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 61

and it was the pretending that might explain how she could smile so brightly while her mind felt nothing - as if, at these times, there existed a disconnection between outer and inner, a shutting off, and the key to her happiness lay in warding off pain, or dodging it, or pushing it into the shape of something else - like shame or anger or even hope.
Sue Saliba
The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory - or in the memory - of the beloved? Some commemorate love with statuary, but behavior, too, is a memorial, as is a well-lived life. In death, there is always the promise of hope. The key is opening, rather than numbing, ourselves to pain. Above all, we must show our children how to celebrate existence in all its beauty, and how to get up after life has knocked us down, time and again. Half-dead, we stand. And together, we salute love. Because in the end, that's all that matters. How hard we loved, and how hard we tried.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
Always remember, child... that to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one onf the things that discipline - training - is about.
James Clavell
For years, I worked seven-day weeks, through birthdays and most public holidays, Christmases and New Year’s Eves included. I worked mornings and afternoons, resuming work after dinner. I remember feeling as if life were a protracted exercise in pulling myself out of a well by a rope, and that rope was work.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
In our circle, stress was a valuable status marker: I stress, therefore I am.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
In those years when their mother disappeared into herself, and old Mrs Jeffrey next door turned into Frannie, their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light bulbs, fix running toilets and cook chops and veggies while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms and talk to strangers.
Liane Moriarty
There were times when I would sob until I shook, until my eyelids were so swollen that it pained me to open them, and through hiccoughs, trembling, I would hiss, don’t touch me! as he moved to place a gentle hand on my shoulder. There were times when we seemed locked into our chairs, discrete, the static between us more eloquent than words. But there was never a moment when I doubted Peter’s ability to heal me.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
It is in my head! That's why it's called Mental Illness.
Roni Askey-Doran
Mental illness is not in the business of making sense of itself.
Roni Askey-Doran
It almost occurred; It almost got hold of my purity, Just as it headed for the war within my being,I fed it a light so bright; It thought it almost had control of me. Depression is just a dis-ease, So; Let your mind be free
Nikki Rowe
The difference between a conventional counsellor and an empowerment counsellor is that a conventional therapist will allow you to dwell in your pit of misery for months, years and possibly even decades; whereas an empowerment counsellor will challenge you to recognise that your past pains and seemingly negative experiences are the very key to accessing your greatest self.
Miya Yamanouchi
I have found that sometimes when a person gives up on 'humankind' they can often find trust and love in animal kind. André Chevalier
Nikki Sex
Gratitude is the antidote for misery. When you are counting your blessings you are too busy to be counting your problems.
Miya Yamanouchi
the greatest cruelty of madness is the power it has to blot out a person.
Geraldine Brooks
I have attempted for years to make fun of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is a dangerous game. It’s similar to poking fun at the largest, scariest bully at your school and assuming you won’t get beat up.
Kelly Wilson
I realized at that moment that depression and I will always be linked, tugging back and forth, like the drunken uncle who still gets invited to the family reunion even though everyone knows he’s going to make a messy scene.
Kelly Wilson
For me, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is like a good friend. A necessary girlfriend, but with chronic PMS. A temperamental – and even volatile – friend who does not play well with others and whom I dearly love. It’s a strange relationship.
Kelly Wilson
We will remember what it was like to lose you, our pain the black background of our electric blue joy. We will remember that there are few answers to our questions; the questions that seem to float into an endless expanse of sky.
Kelly Wilson
I have become conscious of my own “cry face.” My face puckers like the business end of a hot dog except for my mouth, which stretches in a grimace so wide as to accommodate said hotdog horizontally within it. It’s not pretty.
Kelly Wilson
Like depression, loneliness arises from unhappiness creating thoughts feeding into the insula, deepening the negative spiral of thoughts and feelings.
David Michie
My sister wrote letters to the dead and hid them in her bedroom drawers.I wrote imaginary letters in my head to living.
Renee Ruin
I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.
Elizabeth von Arnim
It is not normal for a body to remain horizontal; beyond a certain length of time it attracts concern. Death and burial ('laid to rest') are seen as the natural horizontal states, which is surely why the calculated falsity of perpendicular deaths, such as hangings, crucifixions, burnings at the stakes, etc. produce such indelible shock.
Murray Bail
There is evidence that I have survived this before, that I will go on surviving. There is love. There is love. There is love. Maybe the Cheshire cat was right. Maybe we are all a little mad. And if we are all in this together, then none of us are truly alone. That means me. But it also means you. Across these pages, I reach out to you, dear one whose heart feels so alone. This too shall pass. And we will all be okay.
Clementine Ford
Constantly downcast leads to the death bed.
Veronica Purcell
I can understand why some people might look at me and say, 'What's she got to be depressed about?' I get that a lot in Britain, where mental health issues seem to be a big taboo.
Natalie Imbruglia
How could death not be appealing, when the only thing that gave him comfort in life was being unconscious?
Krystal Sutherland
Nothing is quite as depressing as depression.
Claire Weekes
Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds.
Anna Funder
for a moment, she let herself be defeated, wished herself not exactly annihilation but into a temporary absense, into being nowhere and no one just for a little while.
Sue Saliba
...we can love someone without understanding that person.
Dorothy Rowe
I never knew it was possible to be so miserable in so many ways.
Amie Kaufman
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
I feel like I'm dropping such a long way down again." "I seem to be dropping into a cold dark wet place, where no one's been before and noone can every follow. There's no future there; just a past that sometimes fools you into thinking it's the future. It's the most alone place you can ever be and, when you go there, you not only cease to exist in real life, you also cease to exist in their consciousness and in their memories.
John Marsden
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
I know that sentence is long and has too many joining words in it but sometimes, when I'm angry, words burst out of me like a shout, or, if I'm sad, they spill out of me like tears, and if I'm happy my words are like a song. If that happens it's one of my rules not to change them because they're coming out of my heart and not my head, and that's the way they're meant to be.
Glenda Millard
I didn't understand right away what she meant. But her words soaked through my skull like warm oil, behind my eyes, down my spine and into the empty space inside me.
Glenda Millard
Sometimes words come out of me and I don't know where they come from or why. They're like falling stars tumbling through the universe; bright, burning things that can't be stopped.
Glenda Millard
Trust is a thing you know without words.
Juliet Marillier
I saw pearls in her mouth and the velvet cushion of her tongue and I heard the magic words come out of her.
Glenda Millard
... but I love language. It is a living, breathing, evolving thing, and language has power. Whether in a song lyric, a poem, a speech, or a simple conversation, we’ve all experienced words that resonate with us. They may make us recall a powerful moment, inspire us, move us, or perhaps, comfort us…. But at the same time, we don’t think in words. We think in pictures. If I say the word ‘dog’ to you, you aren’t picturing the letters, d-o-g, you’re picturing a dog from your memory...
Lily Velden
Words. I had always loved them. I collected them, like I had collected pretty stones as a child.
Kate Forsyth
Look into words for the tomb of spacewhere beauties & stones & eternities untangle.(...)In them is the flood which bothers the seaand the songs which need no music.Say these words that evolve into silence,whose language survives not being understood.Pronounce those which are unpalatable &untangle from all the world wants to hear.
M.T.C. Cronin
Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write?The poems they neverlet anyone else read?Perhaps they are Too private and personalPerhaps they are just not good enough.Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfeltexpression being seen as clumsyshallow sillypretentious saccharineunoriginal sentimentaltrite boringoverwrought obscure stupidpointless or simply embarrassingis enough to give any aspiringpoet good reason to hide their work frompublic view.forever.Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED.Burnt shredded flushed awayOccasionally they are folded Into little squaresAnd wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture(So actually quite useful)Others are hidden behind a loose brickor drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clockor put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOKthat is unlikely to ever be opened.someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOTThe truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia.wellAlmost always.On rare occasions,Some especially insistentpieces of writing will escapeinto a backyard or a lanewaybe blown along a roadside embankmentand finally cometo rest in a shopping centerparking lotas so many things doIt is here that something quite Remarkabletakes placetwo or more pieces of poetry drift toward each otherthrough a strange force of attractionunknown to scienceand ever so slowlycling togetherto form a tiny, shapeless ball.Left undisturbed,this ball graduallybecomes larger and rounder as otherfree versesconfessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsentlove lettersattach themselvesone by one.Such a ball creeps through the streetsLike a tumbleweed for months even yearsIf it comes out only at night it has a goodChance of surviving traffic and childrenand through a slow rolling motionAVOIDS SNAILS(its number one predator)At a certain size, it instinctivelyshelters from bad weather, unnoticedbut otherwise roams the streetssearching for scraps of forgottenthought and feeling.Given time and luckthe poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS:A vast accumulation of papery bitsThat ultimately take to the air, levitating byThe sheer force of so much unspoken emotion.It floats gentlyabove suburban rooftops when everybody is asleepinspiring lonely dogsto bark in the middle of the night.Sadlya big ball of papernot matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing.Sooner or LATERit will be surprised bya suddengust of windBeaten by driving rainand REDUCEDin a matter of minutesto a billionsoggy shreds.One morningeveryone will wake upto find a pulpy messcovering front lawnsclogging up guttersand plastering carwindscreens.Traffic will be delayedchildren delightedadults baffledunable to figure outwhere it all came fromStranger stillWill be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paperContains variousfaded words pressed into accidentalverse.Barely visiblebut undeniably presentTo each reader they will whisper something different something joyfulsomething sadtruthful absurdhilarious profound and perfectNo one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessnessor the private smilethat remainsLong after the street sweepers have come and gone.
Shaun Tan
The trouble with words is that no matter how much sense they make in theory, they can’t change what you feel inside.
Rebecca James
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me.They painted themselves onto the ceiling.They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down , on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.
Markus Zusak
We Christians must build all of our thinking in every area on the Bible. We must start with God's Word, not the word of finite, fallible man. We must judge what people say on the basis of what God's Word says—not the other way around.
Ken Ham
What if, as an act of worship, creating something meant healing and restoration took place instead of pain and frustration?
Michelle Dennis Evans
What if the link or key to healing was through finding your unique personal creative outlet?
Michelle Dennis Evans
Words are powerful. They too can be the agents of what is new, of what is conceivable and can be thought and let loose upon the world.
David Malouf
If your eyes could speak, what would they say?
Markus Zusak
You can't stop me. Your word voodoo, it doesn't work on me. Right? So how do you think you're going to-' Eliot produced a pistol. He didn't seem to pull it from anywhere. He just suddenly had it. Wil's eyes stung. 'See?' Eliot put away the gun. 'There are all kinds of persuasion.'
Max Barry
I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. - Liesel Meminger
Markus Zusak
The Wrods We Sepak Ifnlucne Waht We See Ifnlucne The Atconis We Tkae Gvies Us The Rseluts We Get...The Words We Speak Influence What We See Influences The Actions We Take Gives Us The Results We Get!
Roger James McDonald
Words are potential weapons so use them wisely.
Joanne Madeline Moore
I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what couldI tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.I am haunted by humans.
Markus Zusak
For a long time, she sat and saw.She had seen her brother die with one eye open, on still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Fuhrer shouting his words and passing them around.Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
Markus Zusak
She couldn't tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to her bed.
Markus Zusak
You believe the sun will reappear after a stormy day, so why is it so hard to believe, you'll experience happiness after every heartache.
Nikki Rowe