Quotes from Melina Marchetta

How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.

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.

They were uninhibited when it came to music and sometimes the three of them had a tune inside their head that no one else could hear, and tonight it's there between them and they're fucking the space with their bodies.

They're my best friends, I'm going to know them until the day I die.

I recognise Santangelo's dad, who saves police brutality for when he gets to his son.

what was it like out there? Kind of describe it to us," Jessa says, beaming at them and then at me. Trini beams at her and there's a lot of beaming happening.

The king died last. They made him watch and what he did to those princesses and his queen I will never repeat as long as I live. But Isaboe knows, for she walked the sleep of a monster who was witness to it, and if I could have one wish in my life," he said through gritted teeth, "it would be that I could tear from her mind the memory such depravity. Sweet Goddess, that I would have such a gift. I would give my life for it." And then he was sobbing, despairing at his uselessness.

Best way to find the weakness of the enemy is to understand their ways.

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.

Scatter?' Tate said. 'Why? We stay here. Why go anywhere else?' 'Because we'll never know how great this place is until we leave it,' Narnie said.

What kind of freak is this kid who's giggling hysterically with the girls in the neighbouring beds, each with a crush on the other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?

Strange? I don't think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls.

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

Truth is dangerous.

When your're both finished trying to frighten each other away with the sordidness of your pasts, can you help me, please?

I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space.

It's my birthday today. I'm not 17 anymore. The 17 Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth. But what she failed to mention is that you keep on learning truths after 17 and I want to keep on learning truths till the day I die.

Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.

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.

Oh, the way that word is thrown around!" she said. "Everything is evil that humans can't control or conquer.

You blame me for this, don't you?" he says. "I don't need to. You're doing a better job.

I want to be sitting in front of my computer, where you can press a button to block out your junk mail. These two are my junk mail.

They separate us into groups. The Ringleaders and the Others. I belong to the Ringleaders because my weak, pathetic, traitorous, fundamentally base peers point to me when someone asks them who is in charge.

I walk down the steps of the verandah towards her and with shaking hands she holds my face between them, sobbing, "Look at my beautiful girl.