Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 93

Looks like he's lost a guinea and found a farthing," Horace said, then added, unnecessarily, "Will, I mean."Halt turned in his saddle to regard the younger man and raised an eyebrow."I may be almost senile in your eyes, Horace, but there's no need to explain the blindly obvious to me. I'd hardly have thought you were referring to Tug.
John Flanagan
The tavern keeper, a wiry man with a sharp-nosed face, round, prominent ears and a receding hairline that combined to give him a rodentlike look, glanced at him, absentmindedly wiping a tankard with a grubby cloth. Will raised an eyebrow as he looked at it. He'd be willing to bet the cloth was transferring more dirt to the tankard then it was removing. "Drink?" the tavern keeper asked. He set the tankard down on the bar, as if in preparation for filling it with whatever the stranger might order. "Not out of that," Will said evenly, jerking a thumb at the tankard. Ratface shrugged, shoved it aside and produced another from a rack above the bar. "Suit yourself. Ale or ouisgeah?" Ousigeah, Will knew, was the strong malt spirit they distilled and drank in Hibernia. In a tavern like this, it might be more suitable for stripping runt than drinking. "I'd like coffee," he said, noticing the battered pot by the fire at one end of the bar. "I've got ale or ouisgeah. Take your pick." Ratface was becoming more peremptory. Will gestured toward the coffeepot. The tavern keeper shook his head. "None made," he said. "I'm not making a new pot just for you." "But he's drinking coffee," Will said, nodding to one side. Inevitably the tavern keeper glanced that way, to see who he was talking about. The moment his eyes left Will, an iron grip seized the front of his shirt collar, twisting it into a knot that choked him and at the same time dragged him forward, off balance, over the bar,. The stranger's eyes were suddenly very close. He no longer looked boyish. The eyes were dark brown, almost black in this dim light, and the tavern keeper read danger there. A lot of danger. He heard a soft whisper of steel, and glancing down past the fist that held him so tightly, he glimpsed the heavy, gleaming blade of the saxe knife as the stranger laid it on the bar between them. He looked around for possible help. But there was nobody else at the bar, and none of the customers at the tables had noticed what was going on. "Aach...mach co'hee," he choked. The tension on his collar eased and the stranger said softly, "What was that?" "I'll...make...coffee," he repeated, gasping for breath. The stranger smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but the tavern keep noticed that it never reached those dark eyes. "That's wonderful. I'll wait here.
John Flanagan
Gundar seemed to come to a decision. "Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." "Very wise," Halt said. "And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?" Gundar shrugged. "It looks like a channel. It's the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So. . ." "So it's probably the channel?" Selethen said. Gundar grinned at him. "Either that or it's a duck.
John Flanagan
Maybe we should have gone with him," he said, a few minutes after his friend was lost to sight."Three of us would make four times the noise he will," Halt said.Horace frowned, not quite understanding the equation. "Wouldn't three of us make three times the noise?"Halt shook his head. "Will and Tug will make hardly any noise. Neither will Abelard and I. But as for you and that moving earthquake you call a horse..." He gestured at Kicker and left the rest unsaid.
John Flanagan
Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept
Graeme Simsion
Would you have done that in his place? Would you have left him and gone on?""Of course I would!" Halt replied immediately. But something in his voice rang false and Horse looked at him, raising one eyebrow. He'd waited a long time for an opportunity to use that expression of disbelief on Halt.After a pause, the Ranger's anger subsided."All right. Perhaps I wouldn't," he admitted. Then he glared at Horace. "And stop raising that eyebrow on me. You can't even do it properly. Your other eyebrow moves with it!
John Flanagan
Isn't that someone we know?" asked Horace. He pointed to where a cloaked figure sat by the side of the road a few hundred meters away, arms wrapped around his knees. Close by him, a small shaggy horse cropped the grass growing at the edge of the drainage ditch that ran beside the road."So it is," Halt replied. "And he seems to have brought Will with him.
John Flanagan
Yes, I'm back," he said, "And look who I ran into."Horace grinned at him. "i hope you ran into him hard.""As hard as I could.
John Flanagan
Stick your dick in’?” I asked, my brows probably touching. “Did you actually just say that?” “Make love. I meant make love … of course. I would never just stick my dick in you. I would make mad, passionate love to this sweet, sweet body of yours for days, no, weeks. It would be beautiful, pumpkin. There’d be little angels, and birdies, and you know … all just hanging around, watching. Perverts.
Kylie Scott
A hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on," Malcolm pointed out. "Do you have any ideas about how we're going to handle that task?""Simple," Halt told him. "We'll surround them.
John Flanagan
Halt regarded him. He loved Horace like a younger brother. Even like a second son, after Will. He admired his skill with a sword and his courage in battle. But sometimes, just sometimes, he felt an overwhelming desire to ram the young warrior's head against a convenient tree."You have no sense of drama or symbolism, do you?" he asked."Huh?" replied Horace, not quite understanding. Halt looked around for a convenient tree. Luckily for Horace, there were none in sight.
John Flanagan
Interviewer: So. Tell me about your mother.Ezra: You're taping this, right?Interviewer: Audio only. Camera is faulty.Ezra: Okay, well for the benefit of the sight-impaired, I am now raising my… oh, dear… yes, it's my MIDDLE finger at Mr. Postgrad here.Interviewer: Mr. Mason...Ezra: Now I'm wiggling it.Interviewer: Terminating interview at 13:58 on 03/19/75.Ezra: Look at it wiggl--audio ends-
Amie Kaufman
In a minute, in an hour, it will be too late; whatever is happening to her will be set in stone, will belong to the past. But now is not too late. Now he must do something
J.M. Coetzee
Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.
Markus Zusak
Why are some things easier to remember the more time has passed since they occurred?
Anna Funder
For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing.
Robert Hughes
Time was spinning numerous threads for its tapestry, some to be woven together, some to entangle or fray, others merely to perish and pass away.
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Esoteric things progress not according to time, but by activity, they can be slow or quick, depending upon the efforts made.
Belsebuub
My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.
Markus Zusak
It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.
Markus Zusak
For love was a kind of folly, a losing game. The greatest of all Wastes of Time. But then, that depended on what you thought time was for.
Cassandra Golds
Depression, as far as I'm concerned, is just a waste of time.
Helen Reddy
It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.
Markus Zusak
The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.
Steve Toltz
I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.
Kate Morton
Travellers understand, instinctively and by experience, that travel and adventure change and elongate time, even while navigating the deadlines of airline and train departures.
Paul Sheehan
Time plays tricks between here and home," said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator.
Garth Nix
It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.
Markus Zusak
It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.
Tim Winton
She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.
Markus Zusak
She limped, unaided around the house, like a bird with its wing broken. Tame, because it couldn’t fly away. All her time was taken up with managing herself, working out new ways to do things. Being a different person in the world.
Joan London
Some people just carry heavy hearts and more often than not it has nothing to do with you.
Nikki Rowe
We believe in the good old days; we believe our best is in the past. Our past is our memories, our past is our learnings, our past should stay where it is. And we should let it.
Tony Curl
There are some moments you won't completely heal from, those rare ones you will take torn open to the grave but throughout all the big moments that shake you up there will be countless tiny experiences that help you laugh all over again.
Nikki Rowe
Forgiveness is the subjective and fertile ground the acorn falls upon when gifted to ourselves and others.
Gillian Duce
Life is energy and, as such, it belongs to all, reaches all, and blesses all.
Donna Goddard
Assaulted as we are with so many advertisements, messages, appeals, theories, and obligations, we are in danger of losing our way, if not our sanity.We must choose just those few things that we really value. If we filter out the rest and focus on these, we can regain our perspective, and our happiness.
Russell Evans
less small talk and more real talk.
Nikki Rowe
No one can give you that which you can find within yourself.
Belsebuub
Life has played her like a cat weaving between her legs, pretending to be tame, friendly, before sinking its claws into soft, vulnerable flesh.
Wendy James
We will all be destroyed whether we like it or not. I say let's like it.
DBC Pierre
Life is like riding, you will only have harmony once you stop fighting it.
Catherine Louise Birmingham
Our strengths are built not with our words but with our actions,Our fears are faced through those actions,Our lives are shaped by these experiencesand our experiences are driven by our passions.Where is your heart taking you...
Catherine Louise Birmingham
As in riding, so is it in life.
Catherine Louise Birmingham
What may appear to be the wrong way by other people's standards may indeed be the perfectly inspired path by which you will arrive at clarity of mind and a more authentic expression of yourself.
Linda Cull
Some days, my life flashes before me in the blink of an eye, until I get to the scenes I wish I could change, and they play over again and again, until I can't see straight. Promise me though, you'll stop pouring every ounce of yourself into work. Save a part of your life for something else.
Rebecca Raisin
I chose to remain single because I couldn't commit to one person. But it isn't easy. There are plenty of times when I wonder if I made a huge mistake with some of the men I've loved and let go. Maybe I would have enjoyed love, after the dizzying rapture faded, and was replaced with something more fulsome? Truer, deeper? But I never gave it a chance. And that might have been a huge mistake...
Rebecca Raisin
Regret is such a miserable word. But there have been plenty of times alone, where I wished I took the risk and gave someone my heart, and not just a sliver of it. After one stumble, you've pulled the shutters down. Closed up shop. I'm just saying, don't waste your life protecting your heart, or you'll get to the end of it and realize it wasn't worth it.
Rebecca Raisin
If you don't know what you want form life, everything will appear either as an obstacle or a burden. But one of the greatest lessons of history is that the whole world gets out of the way for people who know what they want or where they are going. Be assure, if you don't know where you are going, you are lost.
Matthew Kelly
Live each day as if it were your last, for one day, you're sure to be right.
Kenneth G. Ross
There are so many people put there who will tell you that you can't. What you've got to do is turn around and say "Watch me.
Layne Beachley
LOOK AROUND. GAME DEAD, RIVERS BLACK, LAND CHOKED WITH WEED. SKIES BLEEDING, RED AS BLOOD. FOR WHAT?YOUR KIND ARE BLIND. YOU SEE ONLY THE NOW. NEVER THE WILL BE.BUT SOON YOU WILL. WHEN ALL IS GONE, WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY MONKEY-CHILDREN THAT YOU MURDER FOR A SCRAP OF LAND, A DROP OF CLEAN WATER, THEN YOU WILL SEE.
Jay Kristoff
I didn't give up, I walked awayI had enough of accepting actions that were less than I deserved.So...I made a concious choiceTo honour myself,Before complementing another & If that's what; has made you undeniably mad, Than I know, the history of our connection is hidden in the truth of your heart and regardless of your outcome, I have made the right choice for me.
Nikki Rowe
I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.
Nick Cave
Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another.
Elizabeth von Arnim
Spirituality is for people. It’s not just for those who you might have read about in books, it’s for people.
Belsebuub
All my life I've been fascinated by the precipice in all of us. When you come to it, you either choose to fall or you don’t --Alvin Ailey
Kathy Petrakis
An abuser isn't abusive 24/7. They usually demonstrate positive character traits most of the time. That's what makes the abuse so confusing when it happens, and what makes leaving so much more difficult.
Miya Yamanouchi
If you notice yourself viewing a potential partner as a "work in progress", that's a sign to find someone else.
Miya Yamanouchi
A relationship is the vessel in which you come to know yourself
Pollyanna Darling