Top 300 Melina Marchetta Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”

— Melina Marchetta

202. “This isn’t romance. This isn’t a declaration of love or affirmation of friendship. This is something more.”

— Melina Marchetta

Featured in: Romance Quotes

203. “You’re a bully and I know you don’t care, but I just thought you should know that I think you’re scum. He’s probably some miserable kid with his own demons and he doesn’t need yours.”

— Melina Marchetta

204. “Little people irritate me. I felt like this monstrous giant alongside them.”

— Melina Marchetta

205. “Tom always did anger well. Hid it well, but showed it even better.”

— Melina Marchetta

206. “The silence accentuates the beauty of him. The beauty of this first boy of theirs.”

— Melina Marchetta

207. “My father believed in signs,’ she says. ‘Not that they change events or predict what’s going to happen. It’s more about what we do when we come across one.”

— Melina Marchetta

208. “I recognise Santangelo’s dad, who saves police brutality for when he gets to his son.”

— Melina Marchetta

209. “You’re going to set us all on fire, you homicidal feral fruitcake.”

— Melina Marchetta

210. “For a moment I can’t help thinking how decent he is – that there’s some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues.”

— Melina Marchetta

211. “Jimmy’s wedding day is literally the best day of his life. He hasn’t had many of those, so he’s able to differentiate. After the barbecue is lit, he holds Rosie’s hand and they watch it all in silence. And like always, Jimmy is amazed by the kindness of strangers.”

— Melina Marchetta

212. “Finnikin’s head was bent low over the horse and he kicked its flanks hard and Froi had never clutched the body of one who felt so much but it reminded him of the time when he had tried to take Evanjalin in the barn. Both times the touch of their bodies had burned him, but this time something entered his bloodstream. Planted a seed.”

— Melina Marchetta

213. “It’s called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians.”

— Melina Marchetta

214. “If I did something to hurt Frankie and she said that I was never getting near her heart again, I’d spent the rest of my life trying anyway. That’s the difference between you and me, Tom. I’d go back to the moment it all fell apart and I’d start there.”

— Melina Marchetta

215. “How can someone who made me look this happy no longer be in my life.”

— Melina Marchetta

216. “But it’s the look in his eyes that I can’t help responding to, and I think to myself, forget the girlfriend. Just go for it. And I want to. But his girlfriend is there, a smiler, not a grinner.”

— Melina Marchetta

217. “And it was this image that was stamped on the hearts and minds of all who were present that day. Of Froi of the Exiles holding the future of Lumatere in his hands.”

— Melina Marchetta

218. “And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for. He wished that he had never met any of them.”

— Melina Marchetta

219. “Because your grief at what you saw in those moments was too much for her to bear. Your pain made her weak. Her pain made you strong. Light and dark. Dark and light.”

— Melina Marchetta

220. “Froi heard Zabat’s voice echo over and over again throughout the gorge. Wonderful. The gods had found a way of multiplying the idiot’s voice.”

— Melina Marchetta

221. “Words are intimacy she won’t allow and he would not dare ask for.”

— Melina Marchetta

222. “Love’s easy. It kind of comes with the territory. But liking is another story.”

— Melina Marchetta

223. “She told him that from this angle the treetops looked like cauliflower and she had once heard them beckon her to jump, promising her that if she did, they’d bounce her back in the air again. Some days, like today, he was petrified she’d listen to them.”

— Melina Marchetta

224. “I want to tell him that deep down each time Hannah looked at him she was grateful it was him because Jude did something that the others didn’t. He came back for her.”

— Melina Marchetta

225. “I love this school. I love how uncomplicated it is and the fact that we come from almost two hundred suburbs, so we have to work hard at finding something to hold us together.”

— Melina Marchetta

226. “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.”

— Melina Marchetta

227. “There it was. Suddenly the strangeness of Quintana of Charyn’s face made sense. Because it was a face meant for laughing, but it had never been given a chance. It robbed Phaedra of her breath.”

— Melina Marchetta

228. “And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don’t want my parents or brother knowing, Will’s like, ‘We’ll deal with it.’ He’s never said, ‘Snap out of it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I don’t get it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I’ll fix it up.’ He just says, ‘You’re not up to going back to uni to finish your Honors this year? Big deal. There’s next year. We’ll deal with it.’” She nods. “That’s what he does well.”

— Melina Marchetta

229. “Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a stroke, an action with one’s hand. But not every man knows how to lead.”

— Melina Marchetta

230. “Toto sits up, holding tight to the bar and staring out at the world. He drops a new toy that came with the pram and starts crying. Jimmy picks it up and crouches, looking into his caramel eyes. ‘I’m Jimmy,’ he whispers, ’and you’re the first thing I’ve ever sort of owned and I don’t want to get this wrong.”

— Melina Marchetta

231. “It’s not as if he’s good-looking, because he’s not. Sometimes he’s so plain that he looks bland. But it’s his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter.”

— Melina Marchetta

232. “And for Narnie, hours without them went by, and then days, and then weeks. And in between those seconds and minutes and hours and day and weeks was the most acute sense of loneliness she’d ever experienced.”

— Melina Marchetta

233. “What are you so sad about? We’re going to know him for the rest of our lives.”

— Melina Marchetta

234. “Before I can finish, he turns away and sits down, his back to me, as if I was never there. I stare at the back of his head. There’s something about it that makes me want to commit a violent act with a blunt instrument.”

— Melina Marchetta

235. “Because I want to feel something other than this emotional crap.”

— Melina Marchetta

236. “And slowly the mornings begin to change. Nothing too friendly or exciting, but by the time I get to school, the sick feeling that I wake up with every morning disappears. Not for long, but enough to get me through the day.”

— Melina Marchetta

237. “Everyone had told him to be strong for her, but Finnikin didn’t know how to be strong for himself.”

— Melina Marchetta

238. “There are worse things than a lie and there are better things than the truth!”

— Melina Marchetta

239. “I would like to die of natural causes and not of boredom.”

— Melina Marchetta

240. “And then the Charynite last borns were lifting Quintana on their shoulders and the Lumaterans had Froi on theirs, and she was laughing and he thought he’d never seen her look so beautiful. And over everyone’s heads, Froi could see Gargarin and Arjuro staring up at her with their bittersweet smiles, and Froi imagined two boys with the same face all those years ago in a filthy cave beneath the swamps of Abroi, praying for a better life.”

— Melina Marchetta

241. “Guilt is a burden, so forgive yourself for the mistakes.”

— Melina Marchetta

242. “And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been. Because who they were had always been determined by him.”

— Melina Marchetta

243. “An arm was instantly around his neck. A dagger to his throat. A savage growl in his ear. Sagra. How he missed her.”

— Melina Marchetta

244. “Do you belong to the king?” he asked, his voice husky. 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. “Yes, Finnikin,” she said. “I belong to the king. I will always belong to him.” And there lay the bittersweet despair of what awaited them in the Valley.”

— Melina Marchetta

245. “It’s not that I miss my mother. It’s just that I miss the idea of what one would be.”

— Melina Marchetta

246. “Placing Raffaela in the path of an oncoming car becomes one of the major priorities of the next ten seconds of my life.”

— Melina Marchetta

247. “I want so much not to do the teenage angst thing, but I have to tell you that I hate the life that, according to my mother, I’m not actually having.”

— Melina Marchetta

248. “Don’t let me outlive this woman. Don’t let me exist one moment without her.”

— Melina Marchetta

249. “We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach – the scars from where they cut me out of her.”

— Melina Marchetta

250. “We stay like that for a while. No one tries to analyze it or offer solutions. No one interrupts. Sometimes, momentarily, I’m embarrassed by the whole disclosure, but I realize that I trust these people and I don’t know how or when that happened.”

— Melina Marchetta