Quotes from John Marsden

The dreams now were simply of staying alive.

So, am I a genius?

Human laws, moral laws, religious laws, they seemed artificial and basic, almost childlike.

But somehow, standing in the clear night air, under a sky that glowed like a shower of sparks, none of that stuff mattered. It slipped off me. It was like shedding your clothes before you step in the shower. I felt I was down to essentials again. In fact I felt very close to God at that moment. I guess if you're ever going to feel close to God it'll be while you're looking at the heavens.

I guess our fate is up to us now. And we've been there before, of course. There's something quite comforting about it in a strange way. We've learnt a few things. We know we've got a few things going for us. A bit of imagination, a bit of guts sometimes, a bit of spark.

I don't want them hanging a double murder on me. It wouldn't look good on my school record.

There's nothing lonelier than grief. Sometimes I wanted to cry out to them all in the middle of History "Please please look at me help me can't you see how unhappy I am?" But what would have happened? They would have gathered round making soothing noises helping me out of the room maybe offering me tissues...and none of that would touch the deep dark ocean that circled silently inside. They could not see it touch it stop it. I didn't know any way to do that.

If I have to do battle with you a thousand times to prove my point, I'll do it.' The queen unwisely asked, 'But to prove what point, my dear Hamlet?' 'That I loved Ophelia! Fifty thousand brothers, with all the love they can summon, would not equal my love for here. Ophelia, Ophelia.

We survived, Ellie, we survived.

Mr. Lindell's English classes are meant to make you think I guess about yourself and people and everything. Some of the kids say it's pretty weird but they're more honest in English than they are anywhere else and they say more about what they feel...Everything that's said in English etches itself clearly and sharply in my mind like letters carved neatly into deep frost. But I never let them see how eagerly I listen.

They weren't necessarily soldiers, but you didn't have to be soldiers to be affected by it all.

I was deeply impressed by the fact that my life could lose three days without my having any awareness of it. Maybe this was a preview of death: continuous visions and dreams and vague glimpses of reality. Only with death you never wake up: you keep having the weird images forever.

You're the most important person in my life," I said. He didn't say anything. "You're my brother," I said. He didn't say anything. "I love you, you little ratbag," I said. He smiled, snuggled down in the bed, and closed his eyes.

If people are either mountain people or ocean people then I'm a mountain person. I love the ocean, the few times I get a chance to see it, but I'm a mountain girl.

What happened next played itself out like a terrible drama with two spectators. Lee and I stayed on our side of the fence, like an audience. Of course if the bull had wanted to smash through the fence he could have done so any time, but luckily nearly all cattle live and die without learning that. It's like school, most students go from kindergarten to Year 12 without noticing that they could do a fair amount of damage if they wanted to. They stay inside the fence.

I guess you can't live at full-on intensity forever. Lying on the bed of my cell in the dark, trembling, waiting for the soldiers to come in and shoot me - you just can't keep doing that. There's something in the human spirit that won't let you live that way.

There's nothing like the very early morning. It's the sweetness of the air, the sweet coolness; it's the bubbling of the creek which, for some strange reaction, always sounds more energetic than it does later on; it's the gargling of the magpies.

Homer was so used to being told off in his life that you might as well have told a rock off for being sedimentary

It'd be funny if one of them was called Gavin. Funny but irrelevant.

We're all so curiously alone, but it's important to keep making signals through the glass

Night started to fall, then it fell, till it was lying all over the ground.

I refuse to think fear. I will think strong. I will think brave.

Anyway, I should have known better about the roses. Whatever Mum planted grew eventually. Take me for instance.

Some people wake up fast. Some people wake up slow. I wake up dead.