Quotes by Australian Authors - Page 102

The Dreaming is always; forever... it's always happening, and us mob, we're part of it, all the time, everywhere, and every-when too.
Kate Constable
Love and be loved. Settle for no less. Ask for no more.
Truth Devour
He had acquired a reputation for possessing a noble character, and even for being something of a hero - or, at least, in the assessment of one contemporary commentator, one of those parties who are able to fulfil the public need in the event of genuine heroes being absent or, for any reason, unpalatable.
K.J. Bishop
Over the years I've really believed when you think you're in danger, you are probably not and when you have no idea, you probably are.
Rodney Cocks
Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion.
Gregory David Roberts
Do not hold your breath for anyone,Do not wish your lungs to be still,It may delay the cracks from spreading,But eventually they will.Sometimes to keep yourself togetherYou must allow yourself to leave,Even if breaking your own heartIs what it takes to let you breathe.
Erin Hanson
They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: 'Get it done, get it done.' So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
Markus Zusak
My will is free and connected to my Spirit. When I exercise my free will, I am calm, at peace and serene.
Kasi Kaye Iliopoulos
That’s the thing. I’ve never met anyone like you, Tess. You think you’re a no one? You’re so wrong. So wrong. You stand in a room with all the Angelas, even the Ellies. None of them can compare to you. I remember when you started working at the Onslow, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. You were so terrified. You weren’t full of yourself like other girls. Every time you walked into the bar, you were like a breath of fresh air. Even when Angela was a bitch to you, you rose above it. You made me see the difference in people. You’re not a nobody, Tess, you’re a somebody.
C.J. Duggan
Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.
Steve Toltz
REVISITING THE LIST1. Kiss EstelleOkay, at least I've met her. She thinks I'm a creep. And that's withought her knowing I've read her diaries. Unless we somehow fall over, exactly aligned, lip to lip, and gravity causes the pressure, or we find ourselves in a darkened room and through a series of Shakespearian ID muddles she thinks she's kissing someone else, I can't say how this is ever going to happen.
Fiona Wood
The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den.
Phillip Adams
Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.
Max Barry
The memory will most likely come to me when I least expect it. When I'm in the middle of something else.
S.A. Tawks
Real love should draw no blood from the loved and buckets from the lover.
Emily Maguire
Being born of the dreams and nightmares of humans, they weren’t truly faery or demon. The semantics of labels didn’t matter. There was just light, and there was dark, and neither of them belonged in this world.
Cari Silverwood
Do not mess with this man's threads!
Graeme Simsion
Souls soar high above reach,Hands extend but never touch,Words exchanged in dulcet tones,Tis a fated moment to understand one's truth,Time to let go.
Truth Devour
We all know we're one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. We just kid ourselves that it's not happening.
Rachel Ward
So it's not all that important who people really are. Honestly, you could end up spending your life with almost anyone, and it wouldn't matter who - because the person they are to you is totally dependent on your view of them.
Steph Bowe
I try to do something positive – I socialise more…But deep down I know the truth.An entire world of people can never replace the one that I’ve lost.
Ranata Suzuki
How does it feel to be seven thousand years old?""That depends.""On what?""On how I want to feel.
Greg Egan
Strip by strip the lash carved into Grace's shuddering flesh. My tears were falling by then, heavy drops, joining in the leaf dust with the blood that had begun to trickle from the table. My limbs were so weak that I could not even raise a hand to wipe the mucus that dripped from my nose.She had been lying with her head faced away from me. She lifted it then, and turned, so that we looked at one another. If an anvil had fallen from the sky at that moment and landed upon me, I could not have felt more crushed.(pg 39)
Geraldine Brooks
It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.
Markus Zusak
He was the ocean and I was the sand, i lived content in stillness and he washed a shore everytime, as a better man.
Nikki Rowe
It was nothing. We played tic-tac-toe for a while. You know we do that sometimes.""Oh, I know," Teagan says."Okay, how did you make that sound like we were rolling around ripping off each other's clothes?
Elizabeth Scott
You are ultimately responsible for your life and no one else.
John Spender
people are too quick to give their hearts away, i mean, be fearless; run wild into their arms, but for goodness sake know your worth. A being of wisdom knows their heart is the breath of their existence and only a honorable love deserves to feel it at its purest form.
Nikki Rowe
It’s sad to see how many relationships start as just a distraction from boredom, a cover up so they don’t have to ever deal with the true pain below
Evan Sutter
When I was young I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness. I was right.
Graham Wilson
I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.
Markus Zusak
There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared.
Markus Zusak
I subscribe to the thought that it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. What matters is what works.
Tony Curl
Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.
Bryce Courtenay
The best experiences can't be forced and they come when you least expect it. You don't find misadventure, it finds you.
S.A. Tawks
I understood that I was being shown the future: shards of what would come to be. Often, I cried out for the pain of it. But other times, I was comforted, because I saw, for an instant, the pattern of the whole.
Geraldine Brooks
If I do depart this world out here, let it be known that I went out grinning will you, and loving it. LOVING IT.Steve, are you listening ? I FEEL GREAT. Life’s so joyous, so sad, so ephemeral, so crazy, so meaningless, so goddamn funny. This is paradise, and I wish I could give you some.
Robyn Davidson
A killer on the payroll isn't good for business.' Devour
LA Larkin
A good story is one liked. A great story is one that challenges thought, defiant and gets mouths talking.
Veronica Purcell
Be who you were meant to be and not what you've allowed yourself to become," Kate said to Mavis as she wavered over following her dream. from 'Lifesong
Christine M. Knight
Michael, "I never expected the wish to come true."The Trout, "Great Oceans! Why bother to wish it, then? I call that simply a waste of time.
P.L. Travers
Time is wasted on the young and experience is wasted on the old.
S.A. Tawks
I remember sitting back, on a local beach I called home; thinking about the wild storms I had already faced, the chaotic thunder I somehow learnt to dance through. This time, remembering it, was different. I had no emotional attachment, I felt free of the past and could quietly seperate who I was with who I am now and this moment was empowering , because had I not faced the greatest disasters with courage, I wouldn't have learnt the mastery of life. My self awakening.
Nikki Rowe
A line that reads, 'Died gallantly' would tell a truer story, often, if it read, 'Died screaming'; and instead of the total number of troops who 'sacrificed' their lives, we might simply chisel onto a block of marble the number of limbs left on the battlefield or in hospitals, the number of body parts unaccounted for, missing in action. Such a memorial would be unthinkable, of course, and I must confess that even I would find it tasteless. But if you want the truth about war, you have to start and end with the screaming.
Craig Juresevic
For love was a kind of folly, a losing game. The greatest of all Wastes of Time. But then, that depended on what you thought time was for.
Cassandra Golds
Relationships are valuable no matter who they are between.
Donna Goddard
The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
Gregory David Roberts
Tuoni takes her by the shoulders and turns her to face him. “Remember this Anya. Dreams have power; they show old truths you are too blind to see on waking. They make you remember memories that are lost in the blood flowing through your veins. Remember her magic. Remember what she did when you wake,” he says before he pushes her off the cliff.
Amy Kuivalainen
He took it off, and she could see his hair was damp with sweat, as was his shirt on closer inspection. He mustn’t have bothered showering after his training session. Juliet’s belly tightened. There was just something about a sweaty man that had always done it for her. Good sweaty. Not the festering-for-hours-never-worn-deodorant kind. The healthy kind worked up through hard physical labour. The primal survival kind that attracted a woman to the type of man who could keep her in mammoth stew and furs. It clearly didn’t matter how sophisticated humans thought they were or how far they’d come. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and it still got down to how a man smelled. Mother Nature was one crazy bitch.
Amy Andrews
Life has its insidious way of crawling its way back into your sphere and you’re dumbed down again by so many distractions including work obligations, social niceties and mountains of clothes washing.
Josh Langley
I am part of all that I have met.
Richard Flanagan
I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.There was no anger or reproach.It was Papa who spoke.How did it look?"Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.
Markus Zusak
As a writer, you can’t get to where you want to be, coming from the place you started, unless you have something extremely important you want to say to someone who really doesn’t want to know.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
We have so long been subject to external criticism that we don’t know how to react to internal criticism, because whereas the most enduring, positive and sensible response to the former is a united front – you shall not divide us, here we stand – responding to the latter is an entirely different ballgame.This is my fear: that as a community, we don’t know how to critique ourselves, and that this is dong us damage. Criticism, and specifically the criticism of both literary publications and the mainstream press, has so long been the weapon of the enemy that our first response on seeing it wielded internally is to call it the work of traitors. We have found strength in the creation of our own conventions and the hallowing of our own legends, flourishing to such an extent that, even if we are not yet accepted into the mainstream literary establishment, we are nonetheless part of the cultural mainstream. We are written about inaccurately, yet we are written about; and if there ever was a time when the whole genre seemed a precarious, faddish endeavour, then that time is surely past.Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA
Foz Meadows
POUNDttWe spend twelve hundred generations developing t so-called civilization to the point where it produces an expert who can offer us salvation from our superstitions, and all we end up with is another superstition! If it takes someone like Freud to save us from our neuroses, what’s ttit gonna take to save us from Freud?
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himself never to hurt her, just like I've been doin' - and look what he's done to her. He's left her a crumpled mess, lyin' on her bed all the time.
Markus Zusak
She looks so broken, I don't want to hurt her more.
Dannielle Wicks
At its most fundamental, language is an act of shared attention, and without the fundamentally human willingness to listen to what another person is saying, language would not work.
Christine Kenneally
Don't say "I'm a worrier and this is just who I am"....or "I've always been a worrier, I can't help it"; instead decide from this day forward to become someone who DOESN'T worry.
Miya Yamanouchi
Never question yourself to satisfy the comfort of those living blindly by the false masks of life.
Nikki Rowe