520 Quotes by Melina Marchetta

The pages aren’t numbered, so I don’t know whether I have the beginning or end or whether it’s in sequence but these days I’m not really looking for continuity. All I’m after is something that makes sense to me.

When I was eight years old,” the priest-king confessed, “I wanted to be a god.” The holy man looked around the ragged tent. “Perhaps this is my punishment, but between you and me, I do not believe that the desires of young boys cause catastrophic events. The actions of humans do.

I want to be sitting in front of my computer, where you can press a button to block out your junk mail. These two are my junk mail.

It was strange to have his parents needing something from him. Something this big. In the past, they needed silence from him if he was making a racket. They needed him to apply himself. “I need you to be sensible, Tom.” But not this need. Not the need to make everything right.

Get over it, I want to tell myself. He’s just a gawky guy with a cowlick, not some stud.

Causing a riot is what I do best.

It’s Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I’m torn.

He takes the coffee from her, needing fresh air because if he doesn’t get out of this room, he’ll suffocate from memories. He’s felt like that for more than a month now. There’s no particular reason for it, but sometimes he feels like he can’t breathe, like his body is shutting down.

We look at each other for a moment and for once I feel awkward. It’s not that I’m not into humility; I’ve just never had to practise it.