Quotes from John Marsden

How strange it would now — like speaking without a voice. Is that what music is then, a ventriloquist with his doll ?

After all, it's natural for humans, isn't it? To want to learn. Being curious, wanting answers: that's the way we are.

Death comes walking across the countryside swinging that scythe, and he might get you or he might not.

Als je nooit over jezelf praat, over wat je dwarszit en zo, dan is dat egoïstisch, omdat je je vrienden geen kans geeft om te helpen.

I can understand why they're doing it but understanding isn't the same as supporting.

There doesn't have to be a right side and a wrong side. Both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong.

What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.

Ludzie, cienie, dobro, z?o, niebo, piek?o: wszystko to tylko etykietki, nic wi?cej. Ludzie sami stworzyli te przeciwie?stwa: natura ich nie dostrzega?a. W naturze nawet ?ycie i ?mier? nie by?y przeciwie?stwami - po prostu jedno stawa?o si? przed?u?eniem drugiego.stwa

Do you think Lee's all right?' 'I'm praying my ass off.' At that moment came the happiest sight I'd ever seen. A thin hand appeared out of the shovel, made a V sign or a peace sign-it was hard to tell in the dimness-and disappeared again.

families where the parents float around in a haze of brightly coloured hemp and honey-almond candles, a copy of a self-help book tucked under an arm, and a Dalai Lama keyring for their four-wheel-drive clutched in their hand.

if you have blank spots instead of stories for part of your life, then that would be a pretty serious thing I think.

Ook in een tijd van vrede betaal je een prijs om trouw te blijven aan jezelf, om oprecht te leven. Dit heb ik geleerd: hoeveel het ook kost, het is de prijs waard. Je kunt geen oppervlakkig of zinloos leven leiden. Betaal de prijs en wees er trots op dat je dat hebt gedaan, dat is mijn idee.

We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.

The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.

All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

The Bible just said 'Thou shalt not kill', then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath.

the biggest risk is to take no risk. or to take crazy risks.

What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.

I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.

Why did people call it Hell?" I wondered. [...] No place was Hell, no place could be Hell. It's the people calling it Hell, that's the only thing that made it so. People just sticking names on places, so that no one could see those places properly anymore. [...] No, Hell wasn't anything to do with place, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people.

I live in the light, But carry my dark with me.

We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy.

There are some things that once you've lost, you never get back. Innocence is one. Love is another. I guess childhood is a third.

People just sticking names on places, so that no one could see those places properly any more. Every time they looked at them or thought about them the the first thing they saw was a huge big sign saying 'Housing Commission' or 'private school' or 'church' or 'mosque' or 'synagogue'. They stopped looking once they saw those signs.