Melina Marchetta

“I think of those little sullen-faced Year Sevens back in high school and here are these people who have such a great spirit and so little.”

“you do that all the time you know. you ask me questions when you know the answer will piss you off. ask me a question where the answer could be yes? ask me if you're worth the hard work? ask me if in the last seven years of my life i've woken up in a cold sweat knowing i lost the most important person in my life apart from this kid i'm holding? ask me if getting you pregnat has felt like the best thing that's happened to me since my son was born?”

“I remember passion.”

“I think you'll just have to wait for that Loser of the Month tiara a little while longer while I wear it, with pride, around my neighborhood.”

“And through all the misery, she said that some of us in this lifetime experience a moment of beauty beyond reckoning. I asked her what that was, and she said, "If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll know it when you see it. You'll understand why the gods have made you suffer. Because that moment's reward will make your knees weak and everything you've suffered in life will pale in comparison.”

“Everyone had told him to be strong for her, but Finnikin didn't know how to be strong for himself.”

“Don't let me die. Not now, he begged.Why? she demanded to know.Because I deserve to live.A hand suddenly gripped his wrist.He wondered if the hold came from the realms of the gods. But he didn't care. All he knew was what the Goddess was whispering to him, He'll never let you go. How could you have ever doubted him?”

“It is what a man does for strangers that counts more than what he does for his family.”

“Trevanion wrapped his arm around his son's neck like shepherd's hook and dragged him along playfully. when he let go, Finnikin thought he would have liked his father to hold on a moment longer.”

“I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes—the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.”

“In the end, the sum of my vices is all me.”

“We could look at the side of wonder.”

“Sometimes you look at me and it's like all the bullshit gets stripped off and I'm left with what's underneath and I kind of like what I see. Someone who actually fails. Someone who has absolutely no self-control. Someone who says real dickhead things like 'this is complicated.' I like that part of me, you know. I like the fact that I know I can't control you or how I feel about you and that doesn't freak me out.”

“I love it when you're demented like this.”

“I think I'm a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven't a care in the world. Like I'm fearless.Like I used to be.”

“Sometimes Thomas Mackee will stick an earphone into my ear and ask me to listen to a song. When I get over the revulsion of putting something in my ear that's been in his, I sit back and let the music take over, and for a half hour there's something comforting about someone's heart beating at the same rhythm as mine.”

“And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn't be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.”

“It's how they've stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn't breathe anymore.”

“They camped that night under a full moon and a sky crowded with stars that made Froi forget that there was an old man waiting to die and remember that there was a kingdom dying to live.”

“Froi fell in love. He didn't want to. Not with a Charyn city. But he did because people didn't stand around in Paladozza and stare suspiciously, They sat around and spoke to each other and laughed.”

“Strange things happen when we stand face to face with our enemy, don't they, Phaedra of Alonso?”

“A wise man has tolerance for such people. A wise man walks away or finds a means of changing the way they think.”

“He knew he should have counted. It was the rule to count to ten in his head before he opened his mouth. It was the rule to count to ten if he wanted to smash a man in the face for saying something he didn't like. It was the rule to count to ten if instinct wasn't needed, but common sense was.”

“We pass more women with swollen bellies hurrying towards the godshouse and Arjuro presses a kiss to Tariq's outstretched fingers.'She's mocking me, runt of our litter,' Arjuro tells him. 'The Oracle is mocking me for choosing a man to share my bed. And her punishment is that I spend the rest of eternity staring between the legs of women.”

“Land?' Froi whispered. 'You're giving them land? I'm not worth the valley.''You're worth a kingdom,' Finnikin said, turning back to the crowd.”

“Brothers always. Balthazar is with us too. We make this work,' Finnikin said fiercely. 'We bring peace to these kingdoms. We deserve it. Our women do. All of us have lost too much, Froi. We've lost the joy of being children. Let's not take that from Jasmina and Tariq and those who come after them”

“Why are you smiling?' Gargarin asked Froi, from across the balconette. 'When you're going to have to learn a lesson in diplomacy today and choose between the gardens of two women?'Froi laughed, his chin resting on Quintana's head, his eyes taking in the joy of his son, despite the ridiculous cap that covered the babe's head. He looked across at Lirah and Arjuro and Rafuel, and then back to Gargarin who was smiling himself, because he knew the answer to his own question.'Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder.”

“You’re going to have to learn to ride a horse on your own, Phaedra', he said. 'It will make the journey faster.''The mule and I have an agreement.''The mule and you have similar traits.”

“Sheep. Looting. Cousins."Lucien cursed and got out of bed.”

“Oh, you've outdone me twice now, you queen of forgiveness. The ring's a promise of peace and I'm greedy with hope. It's a song that we sing in a tongue that we share. And though you say it's a gift from a king to a king, I say it's a sign from a queen to a queen.”

“And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. (...) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing.""Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie."You being on that platform changed mine.”

“I look at him."It's odious," he says."Detention?" I ask, confused."Huh?"We have no idea what the other is talking about."What's odious?" I ask."O.D.S," he says, pointing to his discman and obviously referring to some dropkick band.Like I really care.”

“We’re not eight kingdoms, but an entire land with one heartbeat. It’s why people like you and I need to record our people’s stories so we can find those moments when our paths cross, and only then will we know true peace.”

“What is it with that argument? Why is it that you have to jump through hoops of fire to find out that someone's decent? The fact that someone is a bitch on the surface says heaps about them.”

“How seven days had passed since she had disappeared from existence.That it would take the eyes of the gods to find her.Or the heart of the Lumateran exile.”

“All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.”

“There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.”

“I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.”

“This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed.”

“And he saw it in her eyes. Still. The belief that there could be someone other than herself. You, he wanted to shout. You. No one but you. Stupid, stupid girl.”

“These guys fart a lot as well. I'm not saying that girls don't. We just aren't as passionate about them. The smell is sometimes overwhelming and I want to gag. They don't just limit these attacks to the classroom-they can come at you from anywhere around the school. The corridor, the stairwell, the canteen line. There's one area we call Fart Corridor because it belongs to the Year Eights and Nines, who are the biggest perpetrators. They make no apologies and feel no embarrassment. If a girl did one at St. Stella's she'd be an outcast for the rest of her natural life. Here, it's a badge of honor.”

“The idea that God works in mysterious ways is rubbish. There’s nothing mysterious about his ways. They’re premeditated and slightly conniving, and they place you in an impossible situation.”

“About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love.”

“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.”

“His seed will issue kings, but he will never reignFor she would be Queen of Lumatere.But he would be king to her.”

“...he wanted to be all poetic, but in an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life...”

“There were events that stuck in my mind. One, for example, was the case of the missing palace seal at the beginning of winter.’‘Oh the poor animal,’ she cried out, ‘they’re such beautiful creatures.’‘I’m speaking of the royal seal placed on correspondence, as you would know,’ he said.”

“Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian’s mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds.”

“Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.”

“What if she's all I give you in this life of ours, my love?" she asked quietly. "Then I'll shout at the goddess in fury," he said fiercely. "I'll beg to know why I've been given so much when other men have so little.”