Quotes By Author: Melina Marchetta
“Was. What does was actually mean? The verb to be. Past tense of is. Does it mean that someone is no longer being?”
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“Stani walks in later, glaring at them both.“Bloody bastards. One minute punching each other, next minute reading poetry. What’s wrong with everyone this week?”Tom can tell that”
“I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it.” But she’s crying herself now. “He’d be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”
“So what does the winner get in the end?” Tate asked.”They get to sit around with the losers and say, ‘I am King Xavier of the world.’ Repeat after me.””And me?” Tate asked.”You get to be my queen.””How come you’re the leader of the community?” Narnie asked, almost smiling. “Why can’t Tate be?”Webb looked at his sister, grinning. “Why can’t you, Narnie?”Fitz leaned his head on Narnie’s shoulder. “And I’ll be your queen?””You can be the eunuch,” Jude said, shoving him out of the way, “and I’ll be her prince.” He bowed and took Narnie’s hand, kissing it, and their eyes met. It was awkward for a moment until Narnie looked away.”
“Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.”
“Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.”
“She bewitches you,” Trevanion said. “And she is yours for the taking. Any fool can see that. So take her and get whatever needs to be gotten out of your system.”…”Maybe you are right, Trevanion,” he said, turning back to his father. “But it is her hope that bewitches me, and that hope I may never get out of my system, no matter how many times she’s to be gotten. Can you not see it burning in her eyes? Does it not make you want to look away when you have none to give in return? Her hope fills me with… something other than this dull weight I wake with each morning.”
“It’s like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel.”
“He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That 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.”
“Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing.”
“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.”
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.I counted.It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, ‘What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?’ and my father said, ‘Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,’ and that was the last thing he ever said.”
“Sir Topher finally looked up. “Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.””Then I choose to drown,” Finnikin said. “In hope. Rather than float into nothing.”
“Truth is dangerous.”