Top 339 Quotes & Sayings by Melina Marchetta

Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive.

His father's made us paint half this town and if we stick around any longer he'll make us paint the rest of it." -Jonah Griggs

What is it? A prize or something? No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.

I think that we vote, not to get the best party in, but to keep the worst party out.

I would pick them when they bloomed. And when she called me home for supper, I'd place them in her hair and the contrast would take my breath away.

I didn't realize until those few days how much a hug meant. To have someone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.

And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die.

Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you. But no one does.

Those full of fear were the most dangerous of people.

We pass more women with swollen bellies hurrying towards the godshouse and Arjuro presses a kiss to Tariq's outstretched fingers. 'She's mocking me, runt of our litter,' Arjuro tells him. 'The Oracle is mocking me for choosing a man to share my bed. And her punishment is that I spend the rest of eternity staring between the legs of women.

A piece of me is gone," she told me once while we were bra shopping. "I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.

She asked me what type of contraceptive I use. Underwear. Keeping it on prevents pregnancy.

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn't be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.

Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.

He just watched the way Finnikin’s hands rested on Evanjalin’s neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself.

I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.

In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.

You can't go around feeling too much.

Who do you hang out with?" Natalia asks, looking over my shoulder. She's always done that. Wherever you are, whoever you are, she'll always look over your shoulder to see if there's someone more exciting to speak to. It used to make me feel paranoid.

She comes from the school of getting it out of your system, whereas he comes from the school of stewing over it.

But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.

This is war," he say quietly. "Well thank God you're dressed for it, Griggs.

See them together and you will feel a force that will take your breath away.

My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes - the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.

When one is silent, those around speak even more.

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.

Scatter?' Tate said. 'Why? We stay here. Why go anywhere else?' 'Because we'll never know how great this place is until we leave it,' Narnie said.

She made a sound of regret. ‘We come second, you and I, Luc-ien,’ she said. ‘Our allegiance is always to our kingdoms. Without that allegiance, our people would fall.’ She placed her head back against his chest and he felt her tears. ‘This is not our time.’ ‘But that will never mean I love you less,’ he said.

Do something that scares you everyday.

Silence is not just about secrecy, Your Majesty. It is grief and it is shame.

In the end, the sum of my vices is all me.

Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered and every secret will be made known.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.

Instinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundred of kilometers away from home. Hannah, however, did the unforgivable. She deserted me in our own backyard.

She gently placed his hand against the beating pulse of her heart. Always, always it beat out of control, and he held his hand to it until he felt it perfectly match his.

What do you think would happen if we kissed right here, right now?" he asks, digging his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, grinning right back at me. "I think it would cause a riot." "Well, you know me," he says, lowering his head towards me. "Causing a riot is what I do best." Santangelo approaches before Griggs gets any closer and pulls him away. "Are you guys insane?" he says, irritated. "It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians," I say, throwing his own words back at him.

What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?" "Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand.

Simple dreams are the hardest to come true

But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it. And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.

It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.

This isn't romance. This isn't a declaration of love or affirmation of friendship. This is something more.

Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.

Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.

About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love.

Sometimes I feel like a junkie. One minute something happens in my life and I'm flying. Next minute I take a nose-dive and just as I'm about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.

There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.

I'm scared to die," I whispered as Michael walked in. "He was scared to live," he said kissing my forehead.

She misses him more now than when he was away

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

I walk down the steps of the verandah towards her and with shaking hands she holds my face between them, sobbing, "Look at my beautiful girl.

Why do I feel like something's missing in my life without them and they don't feel the same about me?

Phaedra shook her head. “If your people mean no offense, they should not speak their thoughts out loud in front of their children, Tesadora. Because it will be their children who come to slaughter us one day, all because of careless words passed down by their elders who meant no harm.

You just have to belong. Long to be.

It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.

Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

I'm sick and tired of you people living interstate and overseas from people you want to be with. You're ruining my life! All of you!

Even five minutes of your time can make someone's day.

Everyone had told him to be strong for her, but Finnikin didn't know how to be strong for himself.