Melina Marchetta

“One of Sir Topher's rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.”

“City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.”

“It's obvious which one you are,' Jimmy Hailler tells me as we walk through Hyde Park. 'If it's so obvious why can't I see it.' 'Because you live in your own world and can't see anything.' 'Then which one am I?' 'You're all four. You're constantly bitching things under your breath, you come across bloody stupid because you don't speak, on a particular angle in that uniform on an overcast day with your hair up, you've got that stocky butch thing happening, plus you're pashing other girl's boyfriends which makes you a slut.”

“You know what we call you? Bitch Spice, Burtch Spice, Slut Spice and Stupid Spice.'Thomas Mackee says this”

“You just have to belong. Long to be.”

“Logical Tom begs emotional stupid dickhead Tom not to ask the question.'Are you alone?' he asks quietly.He hears her breathing so close to his ear.'Yes.''Good,' he says, his voice croaky. 'I'll sleep like a baby.”

“He stares at the them, mid mouthful. 'Please,' he says, after he's swallowed. 'It's bad enough that the middle-aged are having sex, without thinking of my aunt doing it. And I don't know why someone just doesn't tell Sam to use a condom instead of impregnating the women of the inner-west.”

“Later, when they were almost asleep he had called out to her.'Finke?''Yeah?''We'll make a great team. You plant. I build,”

“Once she made him watch Pride and Prejudice and for ages he would re-word Mr Bingley's apology to Jane Bennet, saying, 'I've been an inexplicable fool', for anything from losing his keys to burping out loud. Her reply to anything she wanted to do was Jane Bennet's response to Bingley's marriage proposal, 'A thousand times yes.”

“No, no, no, no,no,' he gasped. 'You can't bring up your mum and dad while your hand is down there, Finke”

“You know something,Jacob, I'd hate to be as smart as Jonh. I mean he was really, really smart, and to be that smart means you know all the answers, and when you know all the answers there's no room for dreaming.”

“I don't despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life. Not to mend my broken bones, Arjuro. I needed my brother to mend my broken spirit.”

“Don't let anyone take care of you. Can you maybe leave that for me to do? I mean, take care of you? Feel free to take care of me in return... because I think I'll need you to do that.”

“I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said.Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to parts of him he believed to be dormant. And then she winked.'Did I do that right?' she asked. Her smile was lopsided and he saw a glimpse of the teeth.And Froi imagined that he would follow her to the ends of the earth.”

“Is your queen what you are searching for in a woman, Froi?""I never imagined I was looking for something in a woman. But if I did, I'd have to judge her by the way I felt laying beside her before I went to sleep at night and how I felt in the morning waking up to her.""Oh, too profound, my friend. Much too profound.”

“I heard your song the moment we were born. And years later, it dragged me back from the lake of the half-dead when all I wanted to do was die. Each time someone tried to kill me, it sang its tune and gave me hope.”

“There was this time when I looked at a picture and thought it was a man with horns, but when I stepped up to study it I could see it was actually a butterfly with wings standing up straight. That’s what happens when you stop looking at things from far away. My advice… look at whatever you’re scared of from a different angle. Look at it up really close.”

“I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”

“Just say she never gets to hear me say that I always knew she was something special and that's why I was so horrible to her. Because people with that much spirit frighten the hell out of me. They make me want to be a better person when I know it's not possible.”

“Everything hurts, every single thing including the weight of him and I'm crying because it hurts and he's telling me he's sorry over and over again, and I figure somewhere down the track we'll work out the right way of doing this but I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being a part of him. Because being a part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.”

“The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths.”

“I didn't know you had a girlfriend, Griggs." Anson Choi feigns surprise. "What's her name?""I didn't actually catch her name," Griggs continues."Lily," Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look."Great to know that I'm in love with a girl with a cool name.""It's Taylor's middle name," Raffaela calls back again.”

“Are you calling us pigs?’ Froi asked, watching as Rafuel winced for the tenth time at the formality of Froi’s Charyn.Rafuel thought for a moment and then nodded.‘Actually yes, I am. Pig-like.’Froi turned back to Trevanion and Perri, who were discussing the need for longbow training in the rock village.‘What is it?’ Perri asked Froi.‘He said we eat like pigs.’Trevanion and Perri thought about it for a moment and then went back to their conversation.”

“I stand up and walk towards her because my days of waiting for more are over. If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it.”

“So we get a karaoke machine.On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and -eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of "I Can''t Live, If Living Means Without You" but then one of the seniors points out to her that she's chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it."I just worked out that I don't have ambition," she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, "Am I Not Pretty Enough?" I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices."I think she's reading a little to much into it, Raf.""No she isn't. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? 'Don't Leave Me This Way' and 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.'""Mary Grace chose 'Brown-eyed Girl' and she's got blue eyes and Serina sang 'It's Raining Men' and she's a lesbian. You're taking this way too seriously. Let it go.”

“What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?"Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me.""Same," Raffy says.I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking.”

“I can't wait to tell him one day," she says with a giggle. "'Hey, Chaz, guess what? We knew where your precious car was all the time.' I'd like to take a photo of his face. What do you think?""I reckon I'd smile really nicely in the photo," Santangelo says behind me, yanking me out of the way, "knowing that you'll be keeping it under your pillow for the rest of your life.”

“I'm sorry," he says, "for that time I kissed you at that party and for that time at the wedding and more than anything for the thousand times that I wanted to and didn't have the guts to.”

“And secondly, losing your virginity doesn't make you a slut. I slept with your father when I was your age. . . ''Mia,' my father roared from the other room.'What? So we're going to lie to her now,?' she shouted back.He walked in. 'What if your mother finds out? Or my mother?''Robert, it was twenty years ago. I don't think there's much they can do.'He looked at me, pointing a finger. 'No sex for you.' He used the Soup Nazi's accent from Seinfeld.”

“Her voice whispering love soothes him. They'd never done that before. Weren't that type of family. Except now he doesn't know what kind of family they are. What word is it that can define them? What would they call his family in the textbooks? Broken? He comes from a broken home. The Mackees can't be put back together again. There are too many pieces of them missing.”

“Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true.The first name shatters him.The second makes his head spin.”

“Japan." Not about the Japanese, but about moments of perfection. Commit it to memory and make good use of it. Because if I come home and you're still pining over this little girl without having given her a chance, I will call you a chicken shit for the rest of your life.”

“Maybe memories should be left the way they are.”

“he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams.”

“For reasons he couldn’t understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees.”

“What are you doing?" she asked, trying to raise herself."First, I thought I'd show you what a pity it would be if they cut off my wicked tongue.”

“Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. "That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.”

“Silence is not just about secrecy, Your Majesty. It is grief and it is shame.”

“This isn't romance. This isn't a declaration of love or affirmation of friendship. This is something more.”

“You're judging her by her literacy," Tara says. "You're a literacist." "You've made that up.”

“Mama says that satisfaction isn't what I should search for. Respect is. Respect?I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”

“I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.”

“Simple dreams are the hardest to come true”

“What is it? A prize or something?No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.”

“But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it.And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.”

“How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.”

“I just want it to go back to the way it was.""It'll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.”

“The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrifiedand vulnerable.”

“They either don't get it or don't want to. Maybe I'm just not selling it well.”

“I look around for the counter that sells my scent, but I'm so petrified that if I spray it in the air, nothing will come out. And then Mia's scent seems to fade away and everything else fades away with it and I know that all I have to do to recapture it is press the spray button again.”