Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 8

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 source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
Gregory David Roberts
Persistence to fight for what you want is what separates those who win and those who don't.
Tony Curl
The HBS logo shone high above, a surrogate sun for the overcast day.
Jack Heath
One more piece of sky in the jigsaw puzzle of our school.
Em Bailey
I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.
Juliet Marillier
Google's colourful, playful logo is imprinted on human retinas just under six billion times each day, 2.1 trillion times a year - an opportunity for respondent conditioning enjoyed by no other company in history.
Julian Assange
The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now...cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.
Ben Elton
A slow but steady transformation of deviance has taken place in American society. It has not been a change in behavior as such, but in how behavior is defined. Deviant behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meanings. Some say that rehabilitation has replaced punishment, but in many cases medical treatments have become a new form of punishment and social control.
Peter Conrad
Public "facts" are not like pebbles on the beach, lying in the sun and waiting to be seen. They must instead be picked, polished, shaped and packaged. Finally ready for display they the bear the marks of their shapers.
Peter Conrad
Reality" is defined not as something that exists "out there" for the scientist or anyone else to discover but as a social construction that emerges from and is sustained by social interaction.
Peter Conrad
...[D]eviance is an attributed designation rather than something inherent in individuals...
Peter Conrad
When a theological world view dominated, deviance was sin; when the nation-states emerged from the decay of feudalism, most deviance became designated as crime; and in our own scientifically oriented world, various forms of deviance are designated increasingly as medical problems. Thus we view the medical paradigm as the ascending paradigm for deviance designations in our postindustrial society.
Peter Conrad
[T]here are no illnesses in nature, only relationships. There are, of course, naturally occurring events, including infectious viruses, malignant growths, ruptures of tissues, and unusual chromosome constellations, but these are not ipso facto illnesses. Without the social meaning that humans attach to them they do not constitute illness or disease: The fracture of a septuagenarian's femur has, within the world of nature, so more significance than the snapping of an autumn leaf from its twig; and the invasion of a human organism by cholera germs carries with it no more the stamp of "illness" than the souring of milk by other forms of bacteria. (Sedgwick, 1972, p. 211)
Peter Conrad
Illnesses represent human judgments of conditions that exist in the natural world. They are essentially social constructions - products of our own creation.
Peter Conrad
[S]ocial change is not clearly linear and rarely totally beneficial or detrimental. Social change nearly nearly always produces positive and negative effects that are distributed differentially in the affected population.
Peter Conrad
What each culture views as the cause of madness is dependent on its world view.
Peter Conrad
You are ultimately responsible for your life and no one else.
John Spender
WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love.
Annette Janic
You're just a coward, like all those who stand behind the suffering of others.
Sonya Hartnett
The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip- the relative you cringe to kiss.
Markus Zusak
Heartfelt communicators make such a difference in the lives of others through their authentic depth and sincere expression.
Miya Yamanouchi
Gawain laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sir Perceval, when the priest reads the lesson, he says that he who would save his life must lose it. Good words for any man, for there are moments when cowardice will bring death more surely than boldness. But the ordinary man knows, when he goes out to meet the wolf in his road, that he may yet come home in peace. Not so the knights of the Round Table. We win through one deadly peril only to face another. If we banish one evil, we must go on to the next and after that, to the next—until death meets us in the path. We yield up our bodies every day, not for glory and fortune but so that those weaker than ourselves may live. Do you understand?” “I do,” said Sir Perceval. “And I say that there is no nobler calling. I am content.” But then he thought of the Lady Blanchefleur kissing his brow on a night of fire and blood, and with a sudden ache of grief told himself that even a hundred years of peace would not be enough time to spend with her.
Suzannah Rowntree
Look out your window on a morning in spring, ten or twenty years hence, and perhaps you'll see me coming.
Suzannah Rowntree
But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?
Amie Kaufman
People say the beach is the great equaliserWho are they kidding?Sit at Bondi and watch the boys flexAnd the girls walk bolt uprightIt looks like a nightmare episode of Baywatch.The true equaliser is the mountain coldAnd stacks of cold flung togetherMaybe then we’d listen to what each other is sayingInstead of checking out the best bods.And as I wrap another layerAround my Size 10I think of Jack’s favourite saying:“today’s tan is tomorrow’s cancer”I walk outsideAnd whistle at the wind.
Steven Herrick
Pies mean Thanksgiving and Christmas and picnics.
Janet Clarkson
Leopards don't change their spots
Anna Jacobs
Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe
Karen Foxlee
This is because secrets are terrible things. Even the simplest ones
Karen Foxlee
There is a distressing but not uncommon condition of presidents and other world leaders known as Worrying about Africa. It is usually picked up overseas as at summit meeting on world poverty or disease, and symptoms include painful twinges of guilt over the discrepancy between First and Third World wealth, uncomfortable feelings somewhere below the stomach that perhaps unfettered capitalism is not the benevolent force for good we are constantly assured it is, and frequent attacks of calling for Something to Be Done. The best remedy is invariably a stiff dose of domestic crisis.
Nicholas Drayson
Moer and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth in South Africa.
J.M. Coetzee
You have got a sharp tongue, haven't you honey? You'll have to watch it or you'll go to a lonely spinster's grave.
Margaret Way
As I stood on the lonely backroad, I'm sure I heard birds, kookaburras, laughing ...
Steven Herrick
There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.
Markus Zusak
Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back.
Anna Funder
And I knew then that there would be no telling me what he saw. I understand somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost.
Kate Morton
Awkward.That's exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of her, looking at her and feeling things and not knowing what to do.
Markus Zusak
She felt detached from all aspects of her life. She had no time anymore to feel. All that time she used to waste feeling, and analyzing her feelings, as if they were a matter of national significance.
Liane Moriarty
Why must we climb away to the seal-less parts of the world?
Margo Lanagan
i miss my brother likethe sea would miss saltif that were taken away.
Emma Cameron
The green sea swept into the shallows and seethed there like slaking quicklime. It surged over the rocks, tossing up spangles of water like a juggler and catching them deftly again behind. It raced knee-deep through the clefts and crevices, twisted and tortured in a thousand ways, till it swept nuzzling and sucking into the holes at the base of the cliff. The whole reef was a shambles of foam, but it was bright in the sun, bright as a shattered mirror, exuberant and leaping with light.
Colin Thiele
Until now, I've been writing about "now" as if it were literally an instant of time, but of course human faculties are not infinitely precise. It is simplistic to suppose that physical events and mental events march along exactly in step, with the stream of "actual moments" in the outside world and the stream of conscious awareness of them perfectly synchronized. The cinema industry depends on the phenomenon that what seems to us a movie is really a succession of still pictures, running at twenty-five [sic] frames per second. We don't notice the joins. Evidently the "now" of our conscious awareness stretches over at least 1/25 of a second.In fact, psychologists are convinced it can last a lot longer than that. Take he familiar "tick-tock" of the clock. Well, the clock doesn't go "tick-tock" at all; it goes "tick-tick," every tick producing the same sound. It's just that our consciousness runs two successive ticks into a singe "tick-tock" experience—but only if the duration between ticks is less than about three seconds. A really bug pendulum clock just goes "tock . . . tock . . . tock," whereas a bedside clock chatters away: "ticktockticktock..." Two to three seconds seems to be the duration over which our minds integrate sense data into a unitary experience, a fact reflected in the structure of human music and poetry.
Paul Davies
Perhaps there are many "nows" of varying duration, depending on just what it is we are doing. We must face up to the fact that, at least in the case of humans, the subject experiencing subjective time is not a perfect, structureless observer, but a complex, multilayered, multifaceted psyche. Different levels of our consciousness may experience time in quite different ways. This is evidently the case in terms of response time. You have probably had the slightly unnerving experience of jumping at the sound of a telephone a moment or two before you actually hear it ring. The shrill noise induces a reflex response through the nervous system much faster than the time it takes to create the conscious experience of the sound.It is fashionable to attribute certain qualities, such as speech ability, to the left side of the brain, whereas others, such as musical appreciation, belong to processes occurring on the right side. But why should both hemispheres experience a common time? And why should the subconscious use the same mental clock as the conscious?
Paul Davies
The significance of [the fine-structure constant] goes far beyond atomic physics, however. It is the smallness of 1/137 compared to unity that enables us to treat the coupling between the electromagnetic field and a charged particle such as an electron as a small perturbation, a fact of great computational importance. [Forces of Nature]
Paul Davies
God is a pure mathematician!' declared British astronomer Sir James Jeans. The physical Universe does seem to be organised around elegant mathematical relationships. And one number above all others has exercised an enduring fascination for physicists: 137.0359991.... It is known as the fine-structure constant and is denoted by the Greek letter alpha (α).
Paul Davies
In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.
Markus Zusak
Never forget the child inside
Ashton Irwin
What was it Like?""What was what like?" he said, although he knew."Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light." "It was like being fucked in the brain.
Max Barry
It is better to recognise that we are in darkness than to pretend that we can see the light.
Hedley Bull
After a while, she murmurs, "What does it mean... what is it to be American?" The question stuns him. That he doesn't know how to answer stuns him more. Or maybe he doesn't know the answer. Maybe certainty is impossible. We're only as real as what we do and what is done to us in the moment; knowing comes much later, if it comes at all. We're jostled by too many acts that we choose to forget.
Merlinda Bobis
When death tells a story yo really have to listen
Markus Zusak
The sadness of death lies in the fact that it cannot be reversed. Cherish the world of the living whilst you have it, for you cannot visit there again.
Sulari Gentill
I don't remember when i was born.Death I haven't experienced yet.All I know is I'm here now and right up until my used by date comes , I'm going to shake that tree of life until every leaf falls off.
Lou Silluzio
Makes me sad looking at the leaves on my vines turning gold and brown, the branches bare of fruit, but I know the leaves and the fruit will return next spring once more.But unlike lost love ,the love of writing,the love of nature ,the love of beauty,the love of life once its lost its lost forever, I hope i never ever lose that love.
Lou Silluzio
Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and see and earth.
James Clavell
Witches, warlocks, gremlins, orgres - they're just words,labels. Haven't you noticed that when people are labelled, their faces disappear?
Anna Fienberg
For even though the rest of the city--no, the rest of the country--starved and searched fruitlessly for work and slept in a humpy in the park, society's finest could still squander their money however they saw fit.The unemployed, they would say, were lazy. If they worked harder, they'd do as well as Mr. Harry Moneypants was doing, who'd earned his vast fortune by having the foresightedness of selecting rich parents, who had, in their time, also cleverly selected rich parents.
Justine Larbalestier
People are always afraid of anything different. They are afraid of change," says Sensai. "It is the same everywhere.
Sandy Fussell
When we have simplicity we have so much more freedom in every single aspect of our lives. Maybe it's a classic case of less is more? Less stress, less worries, more time, more happiness.
Evan Sutter