Australian Literature Quotes

If a bloke gave you a hundred quid for a book you can bet your life it’s his way, but if all the poor and suffering people raise their hats to you for writing it - that’s different; it makes it worthwhile then.

the most important things can't be lassoed with language. The most important things can only be felt.

In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.

If you want to see your life, you have to see through the eyes of another.

There is any amount of love and good in the world, but you must search for it. Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear. I think that even the most common-minded person in the land has inner thoughts and feelings which no one can share with him, and the higher one's organization the more one must suffer in that respect.

My wife is a lovely leathery green, the blue-tongued lizard said;Her eyes are as red as bulldog ants, lurking in holes in her head;Her body is made of the speckled grass, a violet grows on her tongue,And I could watch her for fifty years if nobody blundered along.

The green sea swept into the shallows and seethed there like slaking quicklime. It surged over the rocks, tossing up spangles of water like a juggler and catching them deftly again behind. It raced knee-deep through the clefts and crevices, twisted and tortured in a thousand ways, till it swept nuzzling and sucking into the holes at the base of the cliff. The whole reef was a shambles of foam, but it was bright in the sun, bright as a shattered mirror, exuberant and leaping with light.

If he had given away anything else, he would have been charged with indecent exposure.

love, real love, comes with three conditions - respect, kindness and trust. It isn't, and should never be, unconditional.

The burning off and the gathering together are one.

I don't believe there is a God", I said fiercely, "and if there is, He's not the merciful being He's always depicted, or He wouldn't be always torturing me for His own amusement.

Everybody's good when they're good, darling. You don't judge a person by that. It's how they act when things aren't good that tells you who they really are.

Do not define me by my gender or my socio-economic status, Noah Willis. Do not tell me who I am and do not tell me who society thinks I am and then put me in that box and expect me to stay there. Because, I swear to God, I will climb the hell out of that box and I will take that box you've just put me in and I will use that box to smash your face in until you're nothing more than a freckly, bloodied pulp. You got that, sweet cheeks?

We would learn as much as we could, be as honourable as we could, be as courageous as we could, and be as happy as we could.

I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.