Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 9

Life can be simple, it ain't easy. So don't take the easy option. Challenge the resistance, challenge yourself, become great
Tony Curl
A beautiful sidenote is, once the toxins and dramas are removed, you purify your life. Simplify and purify. What better way to live your life? Simple and pure!
Tony Curl
At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.
Patrick White
There are those from religious backgrounds who resist and oppose LGBT equality; some very obsessively and publicly. They make bold accusations and negative statements about gay and lesbian people, their supposed "lifestyle" and relationships. But when a son, daughter, brother, sister or close friend comes out it is no longer an "issue" it becomes a person. They realise everything they'd said was painfully targeted at someone they love. Then......everything changes.
Anthony Venn-Brown
To all my friends who constantly talk disparagingly about the supposed 'homosexual lifestyle' and stereotype gay people and the community, I'd like to get this straight. There are essentially two worlds – the 'gay scene' and the gay (or LGBTIQ) community. The 'scene' is like the tip of the iceberg; what is seen by others because it is visible on a street, suburb or pride parade. Like the ninety percent of the submerged iceberg, the community is larger and less visible. It consists of organisations, groups, support networks and also gay and lesbian singles and couples living 'normal' lives in the suburbs. Occasionally there is an overlap but not often. Some live, socialise and work in both. Many never enter each others worlds. The values, lifestyles and culture of these two worlds are as different as Asian culture is to western is to African is to Middle Eastern. Dig down even deeper below the surface and you find it is not a single community but diverse communities and subcultures that are separate but not necessarily divided. The common thing that binds them together is their experience of inequality, discrimination and their desire to make a better world for themselves, others and future generations. If you believe that all gays and lesbians are shallow and obsessed with sex, body image, partying, nightclubs and bars then you are obviously an observer from the outside or mixing in the wrong circles.
Anthony Venn-Brown
Every single courageous act of coming out chips away at the curse of homophobia. Most importantly it's destroyed within yourself, and that act creates the potential for its destruction where it exists in friends, family and society.
Anthony Venn-Brown
It's important to remember that having a conversation about us (LGBT) without us will usually be a recycling or preconceived ideas and misconceptions. Can you imagine a group of male church leaders discussing the role of women in the church without females present. We would call that misogyny. Or church leadership discussing indigenous issues without ever consulting with indigenous people themselves to get insight into what their life experience is really all about. We would call that white supremacy/racism/elitism. The church has done a great deal of talking about us but rarely has spoken with us. So when church leaders discuss LGBT people, relationships and the community without speaking with or spending time getting to know LGBT people it does beg the question why. What is there to fear? Why the exclusion? Is this another evidence of homophobia? It's time for the church to invite LGBT people into the conversation. For some this is a conversation about their thoughts and beliefs but for us it is about who we are. You can ask questions. What was it like to sit in church and hear the word abomination to describe your orientation. What was it like to get to the point of coming out knowing you might be rejected by those you've loved and a church you've served.? How did you find resolution of your Christian beliefs and your sexuality? In listening you will learn. That's why it's so important to remember. No conversation about us, without us.
Anthony Venn-Brown
A review of 850 research papers concluded that people with religious involvement and belief system have better mental health outcomes. They have higher levels of psychological well-being such as life satisfaction, happiness, positive effect, and higher morale and less depression and suicide. If however you are gay or lesbian (in the closet or your sexuality/belief system unresolved)…….. it is the exact opposite….it can drive you crazy or kill you (suicide). Also it should be noted that this research has shown that the very places where Christian young people should feel safest (in their churches, Christian homes, schools and with friends) are actually places of harm.
Anthony Venn-Brown
It wasn't the first time I'd been with someone, but it was different this time. Maybe it was because when I told them I was bisexual they weren't like the girls who thought I was *really* a lesbian; they weren't like the boys who thought it was hot. Maybe it was because when they told me they were genderqueer I just said that I knew and they cried as they smiled at me. Or maybe it was just because our limbs fit together, maybe because it tasted like salt water and was the colour of sunlight through grass. Or maybe it was just all these things.
Alison Evans
Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?
Markus Zusak
One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up.
Markus Zusak
I knew I'd never have another moment like this. Just a single place in time where everything had come together to breathe in harmony. Time slowed and I had gathered all her restless strands in my hands; where I had come from, where I was and where I was going was one long thread as I emerged to make my way into the world.
Belinda Jeffrey
Send silent blessings to those that oppose you, so they may also find peace within themselves—and the strength and perseverance to embark on their life path.
Kasi Kaye Iliopoulos
...she found herself blessing God for her creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for His inestimable Love; out loud; in a burst of acknowledgement.
Elizabeth von Arnim
An ally in time of need is worth more than gold.(Lady Rose quoting Scholar Tan)
Michael Pryor
It's pathetic how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great"-Hans Junior
Markus Zusak
It’s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.
Markus Zusak
...listening with absorbed attention more to her voice than to what she was saying, and thinking how like she was, flowering through her voice into beauty in the darkness, to some butterflies he had come across in the Swiss mountains the summer before. When they were folded up they were grey, mothlike creatures that one might easily overlook, but directly they opened their wings they became the loveliest things in the world, all rose-colour or heavenly blue. So had she been to him in the daylight that afternoon,--an ordinary woman, not in any way noticeable; but now listen to her, opening into beauty on the wings of her voice!
Elizabeth von Arnim
When you express thankfulness, even the almost empty tank of petrol will go the extra mile; it changes challenges into opportunities, mistakes into experiences, disappointments into celebrations, doubt into faith.
Malti Bhojwani
Pseudo idealism: apparent charitable behaviour that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him or herself
Jeremy Griffith
Loneliness had made the Queen bitter, bitterness had made her selfish, and selfishness had made her suspicious. --The Changeling
Kate Morton
I was too selfish to have a child before I was ready for one, and there's no shame in admitting that. Women should be selfish about our choices, for as long as we have the privilege of being selfish. Selfishness in women isn't the great crime that people like to pretend it is. We are as entitled as men to prioritise ourselves and our desires, and we are as capable as men of knowing what's best for us. Why is everyone so pathologically terrified of selfish women? The word is thrown around like an insult, as if the worst thing a woman could possibly do (aside from being fat, having sex with whomever she pleases and whenever, swearing, having an abortion, drinking alcohol, standing up for herself and being a working mother) is to decide that her life matters.But women are allowed to be selfish. It shouldn't be considered a 'privilege' to be able to control our own bodies nor should it be treated like a favour done to us by the state. It's a right that, by and large, has been stolen from us and used to keep us in thrall to a paternalistic body that pretends to know what's best for us but is really only interested in maintaining the order that has proved best for them.
Clementine Ford
People play small for lots of reasons, but at the core of them all is fear. Playing small means playing safe—avoiding risk, failure, criticism, and the list goes on. But just imagine how incredibly different the world would be if everyone committed to playing big—taking on audacious goals, trying to make a meaningful difference, being all they could possibly be.
Margie Warrell
Your “everybody” probably represents even a smaller proportion of the population than your Rolodex. Psychologists have documented that our typical everybody— to which they refer as the “generalized other”—is usually a collection of about five or six people.
Margie Warrell
Well, that is what you risk when you fall in love. You risk losing your dignity.
J.M. Coetzee
There are two types of risk in life: the danger of trying and the danger of not trying.
Nick Vujicic
Give a man a fishtand he'll eat for a day.Teach him how to fish twith the right line, tthe right bait,tat the right time of day, tat the right sort of spot,tand if he has the right recreational or commercial licencethe may, twith practise and experience,tactually be able to feed himself tand his family tfor a lifetime.tAnd that tis something worth fishing for!
Cameron Semmens
Hope is a mistake. If you cant fix what's broken, you will go insane.
Mad Max Fury Road
It's life's failure and its deficiencies that make someone a daydreamer. I don't understand why prophets and philosophers didn't see the significance in that. I think imagination is at the heart of reality, or at least, is the immediate definition and interpretation of reality.
Shokoofeh Azar
Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.
M.L Stedman
It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.
M.L Stedman
POUNDttWe spend twelve hundred generations developing t so-called civilization to the point where it produces an expert who can offer us salvation from our superstitions, and all we end up with is another superstition! If it takes someone like Freud to save us from our neuroses, what’s ttit gonna take to save us from Freud?
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
You're a hope-killer. 'Cause at least if you'd done it on your back, that's something we c'n understand. Something we c'n do ourselves. But kindness? Luck like that-- it's a million-to-one chance, and you already took the one chance going.
Michelle Diener
It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.
Markus Zusak
A strong man can make his own luck.
Gregory David Roberts
Don’t worry about the little stuff. None of it matters. Only love matters. If you remember this, that love is always present; it will be a good life
Bronnie Ware
I had not the least idea of a gamekeeper's occupation being so dangerous - there had never been such a person employed on the Longbourn estate - and just as I had spent half the previous night wondering about Peter, I spent half the next one worrying about him.
Jennifer Paynter
Worry is like a rocking-chair. It gives you something to do buy gets you nowhere.
Wayne Bennett
I'd like you to see that we are interfering too drastically. WE can't just assume so completely that Azerbaijan is in the hands of dangerous men and vicious Bolsheviks. I suppose it's all in the way you see Iran. I'd like you to see that Iranians are just as serious about their politics as we are: perhaps more so. The Iranian is a vigorous individual with definite ideas about the right and wrong done to him. It's easy for these journalists to laugh at the idea of political spontaneity among the Iranians because they look on these people as dirty, stupid, childlike natives who stare open-mouthed while the wonders of the west are offered to them.…...They are not like that at all. They want proper government, the same as anybody else. They have certainly tried hard enough to get it, but they haven't had a chance. We have done a great deal to prevent them getting real government. It may shock you, but we have always wanted corrupt administrations. Since the Reuter concessions sixty years ago we have begaved like American gangsters using threats, money, and even war to extort privileges and concessions which amounted to owning the country. At one time we had complete control over the administration, over the entire wealth of the land, the banks, and the army. It's rather silly to say the Iranians are un-political when you realize how quickly we had to hand back those concessions. This country rose to a man against us. We gave in hastily, but we managed to cling desperately to our oil concessions. [MacGregor]I think you are worrying yourself unduly [Essex]. We can't be too bad an influence. We may not be reformers ourselves... but we do not fight people who are really trying to improve the country. You must admit that we did not resist the last Shah, and he certainly reformed the place as best as it could be reformed.[MacGregor] It has become a habit to pass all compliments to Reza Shah,...even though we dethroned him. All reforms and modernizations are supposed to be his idea. Yet he simply took over the power of a popular revolution which we resisted at the time. He took power as a despot and he was little better than his predecessors. These people are getting fed up with despots. They obviously want to achieve some kind of better government, particularly in Azerbaijan.… That revolt in Azerbaijan doesn't have to be a Russian idea. It is really the continuation of five or six revolutions, all of them trying to get rid of corrupt governments. This time they seen to be succeeding. Our idea is to stop it.... Every level of government in Iran is corrupt from top to bottom, including the court, the police, and the parliament. Government is organized corruption. The ministers prey on the population like buzzards; they arragne taxes, laws, finances, famines; everything to the purpose of making money. The last Shah might have wiped out some of it; but that meant he became the biggest grafter of them all. He controlled the little fellows, and took the best of everything for himself. By the end of his rule he owned about a fifth of this entire country. He is not the hero we think he is, and his police regime was as brutal as anything the Germans had. Though we co-operated with him, he was a little tougher than the others and he always held out for more. Once, he threatened to wipe out our oil concession but we brought him off. He could always be bought off, like all the other grafters.
James Aldridge
It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.
Christos Tsiolkas
Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.
Peter Porter
Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.
Juliet Marillier
What I did not know was how longing could store itself away in the hollows of one's bones and then one day without warning flood out.
J.M. Coetzee
How could I want one thing so much and its exact opposite at the same time?
Kate Mildenhall
And I wanted Jordan, because if he wanted me back it would mean I wasn't ordinary. A guy like him wouldn't settle for that.
Vikki Wakefield
He had fallen into the error of all liberals: the belief that men are prepared to reform themselves, that good will attracts good will, that truth has leavening virtue of its own.
Morris West
Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.
Kenneth Minogue
She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.
Sonya Hartnett
You are worthy and deserving of your desires. Following your heart’s Desire is the same as living God’s will, when you listen to your inner self and wisdom; you are actually carrying out God’s intention.
Malti Bhojwani
You're the hero my young romantic heart settled on so long ago, you're an absolute tiger at times, you're devious and not above playing a few tricks. I love you whatever you are all the time. I've loved you for ten years without stopping. I'll love you for as long as I have breath in my body. I'm committed to one man and I'm ready to face real life with him.
Margaret Way
Even the most pragmatic person fell victim at times to a longing for something other.
Kate Morton
He had acquired a reputation for possessing a noble character, and even for being something of a hero - or, at least, in the assessment of one contemporary commentator, one of those parties who are able to fulfil the public need in the event of genuine heroes being absent or, for any reason, unpalatable.
K.J. Bishop
Who brings out the champion in you?Those that help you be the hero of your story, keep them close.
Tony Curl
We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.
Sonya Hartnett
Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards.
Peter Singer
This stream of watching made what was watched wanted.
Jane Alison
Stirton's work, he says, is now all about investigation. 'You literally are trying to find out what's happening and, finally, manoeuvre yourself to the point where you can take a picture, and then you're presented with a 20-minute window where it's: Okay, now get your picture!' His voice is charged with emotion. 'Fucking angst and worry and, you know, FEAR of failure – every aspect of that comes into those 20 minutes, so it's a very intense experience. So when I make those pictures, I'm worried; I’m nervous.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
What's required of me in the field is to feel,' Stirton says with emphasis. 'And trying to take that feeling and put it in a form that communicates a particular set of emotions or circumstances - whether that involves depicting masculine pride, or a particular kind of suffering, or love, or closeness - my primary job is to feel and to try to put that feeling into some kind of visual form. My goal is to get to the heart of each story, you know? I’m trying to evolve in my work.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke
My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.
Helmut Newton
Photography is the story I fail to put into words.
Destin Sparks