Quotes from Melina Marchetta

It was strange to have his parents needing something from him. Something this big. In the past, they needed silence from him if he was making a racket. They needed him to apply himself. "I need you to be sensible, Tom." But not this need. Not the need to make everything right.

She clutched him, her fingers digging in like she needed to gather parts of him to act as her own second skin for the rest of her life.

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?

Like some crazed masochistic yo-yo

Her eyes pools of absolute sorrow

Webb read fantasy; Jude read realism

Because who they were had always been determined by him

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." Georgie stares at him, stunned, and then she bursts out laughing. "Middle-aged? What a little dickhead," Lucia says.

Some days are worse than others, my love, some days better than most.

can you see what I see? No I don't think you can I can see images of nothing and I attempt to make that nothingness into something As hard as I try there is still nothing and that nothing is meaningless I am somewhere else now, outside I am surrounded by people and the blueness of the sky but still nothing has changed Everything remains the same I am still alone

Mia's mother, Nonna Celia, is to blame for that, because she's a prophet of doom. Every time I'd ask her if we could go someplace the next day or next week, her reply would be, "We might not live that long." If I'd say, "See you tomorrow," her answer would be, "If that's what God wants." Leaving so much to fate has kept me an insomniac for most of my life...

Then choose another bond. One written by yourself. Because it is what you do for strangers that counts in the end.

And tonight I'll be with friends and family, which is what life is all about.

silence from one party always resulted in information from another.

Hatred smothers all beauty.

And he knew that, but all his life he'd been treated like crap to the point that he believed he was crap. He'd never done anything good and nobody had ever said anything positive about him.

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.

Recuerdo amor. Es lo que tengo que seguir recordándome. Es gracioso cómo puedes olvidarlo todo, excepto el amor de las personas que te han querido. Tal vez por eso a los humanos nos cuesta tanto recuperarnos de las historias de amor. No es el dolor lo que tratan de superar, es el amor.

You're judging her by her literacy,' Tara says. 'You're a literacist.

my dad goes along with it because no one in my family has ever pretended that my mother doesn't make all the decisions.

I want so much not to do the teenage angst thing, but I have to tell you that I hate the life that, according to my mother, I'm not actually having.

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

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

At home, at our most vulnerable, she's Mummy. When we're talking to other people she's Mum, but in my head she's just Mia because I've been angry at her so many times that I've wanted to distance myself from her.