Top 35 Craig Silvey Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “You need to understand that truth is stranger than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They want to be told stuff. And they don’t want to doubt you either. It’s too hard.”

— Craig Silvey

2. “I don’t understand a thing about this world: about people, and why they do the things they do. The more I find out, the more I uncover, the more I know, the less I understand.”

— Craig Silvey

3. “My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up.”

— Craig Silvey

4. “Life might be easier if you give in a little, but it’s better if you hold onto something so hard you can’t give it up.”

— Craig Silvey

5. “Still, there is something emboldening about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. Like I know something they don’t.”

— Craig Silvey

6. “Jasper Jones fell out of this world and nobody noticed... And they’ll notice now because something has been burned. Now they’ll look for Jasper Jones.”

— Craig Silvey

7. “Because a girl goes missing in this town and it’s Jasper Jones who is held and threatened and belted for days, but somehow those monsters will arouse no suspicion.”

— Craig Silvey

8. “I mean, I know people have always bin afraid of me. Kids specially, but old people too. Wary. They reckon I’m just half an animal with half a vote. That I’m no good. And I always used to think, why? They don’t even know me. Nobody does. It never made sense. But then I realized, that’s exactly why. That’s all it is. It’s so stupid, Charlie. But it means I don’t hate them anymore.”

— Craig Silvey

9. “I never understood why you would ever feel the need to shoot the fish in the barrel. I mean, they’re in a barrel, you’ve already caught them. The hard work’s done, they can’t escape. So if you want them dead, just drain the water out. Why bring guns into it?”

— Craig Silvey

10. “And it happens like that. Like when you first realise that there is no such thing as magic.”

— Craig Silvey

11. “Batman doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s not superhuman. He’s not super. So therefore he can’t be a superhero.”

— Craig Silvey

12. “Tongues were wagging. Aspersions were being cast like dandelion spores on hot gossipy winds.”

— Craig Silvey

13. “See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter.”

— Craig Silvey

14. “See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter... I don’t know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don’t even notice. Maybe it’s like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What’s amazing is that they think they’re fooling anybody.”

— Craig Silvey

15. “I collect words and lock them away, stored like a hoard of gems.”

— Craig Silvey

16. “And so I think I got married because I thought that a ring would lock that love in forever, because it’s very scary when it is just your feelings holding you together.”

— Craig Silvey

17. “I’d sneer and tell him he’s got the cerebral finesse of an amoeba and delight in his squint of confusion.”

— Craig Silvey

18. “The less you know, the further away you are, the easier it is to shrug and tut and move on. And so Corrigan remains a town of barnacles. A cluster of hard shells that suck themselves stuck and clench themselves shut and choose not to know about dying.”

— Craig Silvey

19. “I force a smile and hold up my hand, which must end up looking like some sort of strange, leery wince, like I’ve just swallowed a glass of somebody’s urine and I’m recommending it.”

— Craig Silvey

20. “Everyone deserves to walk their own path.”

— Craig Silvey

21. “See, everyone here’s afraid of something and nuthin. This town, that’s how they live, and they don’t even know it. They stick to what they know, what they bin told. They don’t unnerstand that it’s just a choice you make.”

— Craig Silvey

22. “It’s better to shut up and appear stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

— Craig Silvey

23. “I wasn’t cold, but I was shivering when I walked onto the Clayton Road overpass. I wasn’t scared either, even when I climbed over the rail. I didn’t feel much of anything.”

— Craig Silvey

24. “I forgot what it felt like to be young.”

— Craig Silvey

25. “Cricket is the most repetitive enterprise in history.”

— Craig Silvey

26. “And I’m not wrong, I’m me. And I don’t want to be invisible anymore. I want people to see who I am.”

— Craig Silvey

27. “Edie’s diaries made me realise life was made up of lots of small moments that you could control and a few big ones that you couldn’t.”

— Craig Silvey

28. “That’s what you do, right? When you’re readin. You’re seeing what it’s like for other people.”

— Craig Silvey

29. “And I knew that I would go to war too if it meant coming home to someone.”

— Craig Silvey

30. “It’s all yours, Honeybee. This is your home.”

— Craig Silvey

31. “Find out who you are, and live that life.”

— Craig Silvey

32. “A few times the landlord changed the locks with all our things inside. My mum would call her friend Dave, who was a locksmith, and he would get us back in. Then she sent me outside to play for an hour while she said thank you to Dave.”

— Craig Silvey

33. “But you don’t think I’m a freak or anything?’ ‘Mate, I think you’re just you, and there’s nothing the matter with that.”

— Craig Silvey

34. “Then I saw that he had taken the pills from both silver sheets. He had swallowed them all. I started to cry. ‘It’s alright, mate,’ Vic said. ‘It’s alright.’ ‘I don’t want you to die.’ ‘It’s time. It’s time.”

— Craig Silvey

35. “Look at me. You’re not on your own, Sam. Whatever you’re feeling, someone else has felt it. Whatever you’re going through, someone else has gone through it. And if we haven’t, we can do our best to understand.”

— Craig Silvey