Top 300 Melina Marchetta Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I do not believe that the desires of young boys cause catastrophic events. The actions of humans do.”

— Melina Marchetta

102. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

103. “Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.”

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

105. “I’ve had it with this waiting business. I can cope with another woman, but I can’t cope with being ignored when there’s nothing in his way.”

— Melina Marchetta

106. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

107. “If I could be anything but what I am, I would be tomorrow. If I could be what my father wants me to be, then maybe I could stay for that, too. If I could be what you want me to be, I’d want to stay. But I am what I am, and all I want is freedom.”

— Melina Marchetta

108. “Land?? Froi whispered. ‘You’re giving them land? I’m not worth the valley.’ ‘You’re worth a kingdom,’ Finnikin said, turning back to the crowd.”

— Melina Marchetta

109. “Everything is evil that humans can’t control or conquer.”

— Melina Marchetta

110. “Woman, I’m trying to fight here! Or has that escaped your attention?”

— Melina Marchetta

111. “Part of Quintana had left this world and Froi knew that part of him was gone as well.”

— Melina Marchetta

112. “One of Sir Topher’s rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.”

— Melina Marchetta

113. “How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.”

— Melina Marchetta

114. “Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he’s muffling it, but I can hear and I want someone to come over and jab her with a sedative because its pitch pierces my soul.”

— Melina Marchetta

115. “He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it’s likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.”

— Melina Marchetta

116. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

117. “Because people aren’t interested in the truth, Dafar. They’re interested in what keeps them safe. They’re interested in being looked after. They’re interested in a tale being spun.”

— Melina Marchetta

118. “When one is silent, those around speak even more.”

— Melina Marchetta

119. “For reasons he couldn’t understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees.”

— Melina Marchetta

120. “She’s a dead loss. Has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She’s so insipid, she’s almost invisible.”

— Melina Marchetta

121. “I don’t want to let go, because tonight I’m not looking for anything more than being part of him. Because being part of him isn’t just anything. It’s kind of everything.”

— Melina Marchetta

122. “Balthazar pledged to die defending his royal house of Lumuatere. Finnikin swore to be their protector and guide for as long as he lived. Lucian vowed he would be the light whom they traveled toward in times of need.”

— Melina Marchetta

123. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

124. “A clean house will result in peace in the Middle East as well.”

— Melina Marchetta

125. “City people. They may know how to street fight but they don’t know how to wade through manure.”

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

127. “We just wanted to have fun. Mia wanted us to change the world.”

— Melina Marchetta

128. “If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she’d never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.”

— Melina Marchetta

129. “Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that’s not my flesh and blood after all these years?”

— Melina Marchetta

130. “Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.”

— Melina Marchetta

131. “And in that dark silence where it seems that everyone is someplace but me, it all comes back.”

— Melina Marchetta

132. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

133. “They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke. Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.”

— Melina Marchetta

134. “How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?”

— Melina Marchetta

135. “I ran away one day. He was running in the same direction.”

— Melina Marchetta

136. “If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”

— Melina Marchetta

137. “I remember love. It’s what I have to keep on reminding myself. It’s funny how you can forget everything except people loving you.”

— Melina Marchetta

138. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

139. “But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I’m tired and the feeling that I’ve had for a while-that something is haunting me down-becomes all consuming and I’m frightened that one morning there will be not enough to keep me going.”

— Melina Marchetta

140. “Froi didn’t know where home was anymore. He wanted to return to Lumatere, and he wanted to stay in Charyn. What strangeness was that? To belong in two kingdoms. He felt a sob rise within him that he swallowed hard the moment he felt Lirah and Gargarin at his shoulders.”

— Melina Marchetta

141. “Don’t let them take away our little king, Froi. Not the Avanosh people or Bestiano. I’m begging you, Froi.” That she had to speak the words broke something inside of him. “I will protect you,” he whispered. “I will never let anything happen to you or our child.”

— Melina Marchetta

142. “Unexpectedly, a fierce sense of protectiveness comes over me. Except I fight it back because I can hardly look after myself these days.”

— Melina Marchetta

143. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

144. “I look over to the other side of the road and watch Griggs as he walks. It’s a lazy walk but so full of confidence that you want to be standing behind him all the way.”

— Melina Marchetta

145. “Her voice stopped him. “I woke with your name on my lips every morning. Like a prayer of hope. For now, that’s all I can offer.”

— Melina Marchetta

146. “Some of us weren’t born for rewards, Froi. We were born for sacrifices.”

— Melina Marchetta

147. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

148. “Sometimes your whole system just shuts down and you wake up in the morning and everything’s black and no matter how much people speak to you and try to talk you out of it and tell you everything’s okay, it doesn’t work.”

— Melina Marchetta

149. “And if the gods were to give me a choice between living a better life, having not met them, or a wretched life with the slightest chance of crossing their path, then I’d pick the wretched life over and over again.”

— Melina Marchetta

150. “It’s like geographical humor. You just don’t get it unless you were there.”

— Melina Marchetta