Top 300 Melina Marchetta Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “And at last Finnikin understood why he had felt so sorrowful and silent these last few days. He knew how to be Finnikin of the Rock to Evanjalin of the Monts. But he had no idea who to be to Queen Isaboe.”

— Melina Marchetta

252. “You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?”

— Melina Marchetta

253. “I think you’ll just have to wait for that Loser of the Month tiara a little while longer while I wear it, with pride, around my neighborhood.”

— Melina Marchetta

254. “If there was one weapon he had against these savages, it was not acknowledging their existence.”

— Melina Marchetta

255. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

257. “No. But it’s like the argument ‘don’t donate to third-world countries because the money mightn’t get to them.’ People only say that because it makes them feel better about the fact that they do nothing.”

— Melina Marchetta

258. “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

259. “I see the look on her face that says nothing can happen to her if she’s holding on to her dad. It kills me to hate them so much for having that.”

— Melina Marchetta

260. “How can you fight the world with a quiver in your voice, Beatriss of the Flatlands?”

— Melina Marchetta

261. “I wasn’t there that day to get on the three forty-seven to Yass”, he says. “I was there to throw myself in front of it.”

— Melina Marchetta

262. “If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one’s worth came from others.”

— Melina Marchetta

263. “When he wins the bet, I tell Griggs that it will take me a lifetime to save up two trillion dollars and he tells me that he’s only giving me seventy years.”

— Melina Marchetta

264. “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

265. “It was that he knew that voice, had dreamed it over and over again in a lifetime of rot and misery, and Froi wanted to weep. For he knew he would break his bond to his queen not just with his body but also with his heart.”

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

267. “He’s never asked about her depression in the past, just knew it was there like a big black blob over her head. In Year Eleven they thought it was a one-off because her mother had been sick, but he had seen it once or twice again. Francesca knew the signs and he could tell she fought it with everything she had inside of her.”

— Melina Marchetta

268. “Because being part of him isn’t just anything. It’s kind of everything.”

— Melina Marchetta

269. “People divulge things to you that they would not divulge to anyone else.”

— Melina Marchetta

270. “She misses him more now than when he was away.”

— Melina Marchetta

271. “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

272. “In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.”

— Melina Marchetta

273. “At times it’s like sadness has planted itself on her face, refusing to leave, an overwhelming sadness, and sometimes I see despair there, too.”

— Melina Marchetta

274. “Sometimes Webb believed that he would never experience a better feeling than when he was looking at her, would never see anything or anybody bursting with more life and spirit. Sometimes he felt he needed to inhale it and place it in a storage area in his soul. Just in case.”

— Melina Marchetta

275. “He watched as Finnikin swung onto the horse, his sleeve stained with blood. Froi liked the way Finnikin reached behind him and took Evanjalin’s hand, placing it around his waist. It made everything seem normal because Finnikin always wanted to touch her.”

— Melina Marchetta

276. “Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”

— Melina Marchetta

277. “Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?” Did I wonder? When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know? Wonder dies.”

— Melina Marchetta

278. “But you pashed Jonah Griggs and he’s the leader of the enemy.”

— Melina Marchetta

279. “She knows that feeling too. Of believing that each time someone says her name, it’s to tell her that something bad has happened.”

— Melina Marchetta

280. “My friends always told me they wanted to rescue me from Siobhan, and I relished being saved because it meant that people stopped tapping me on the shoulder to point out what I was doing wrong.”

— Melina Marchetta

281. “Do not cry,” she said fiercely, but her own tears flowed. “Do not cry, Finnikin. For if we begin, our tears will never end.”

— Melina Marchetta

282. “He knew he should have counted. It was the rule to count to ten in his head before he opened his mouth. It was the rule to count to ten if he wanted to smash a man in the face for saying something he didn’t like. It was the rule to count to ten if instinct wasn’t needed, but common sense was.”

— Melina Marchetta

283. “I’m frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going.”

— Melina Marchetta

284. “You can’t go around feeling too much”, Captain Travanion had explained watching a moment to ensure the man was indeed dead. “Because if you feel too much, enough to want to kill them so savagely then one day you are going to feel enough to spare their lives.”

— Melina Marchetta

285. “Because I remembered your words,” she said quietly. “I remembered that you liked me least. You said it in my palace chamber. ‘Have one of the others wake me, for I like you least.’” She turned to face him and brushed tears fiercely from her face. “Sometimes when I see what’s left of Quintana of Charyn through my own eyes, I think I can learn to love her. But when I see her through your eyes, I despise her.” If she saw Quintana of Charyn through Froi’s eyes, he knew she’d see a part of himself.”

— Melina Marchetta

286. “I’d go back to the moment it all fell apart and I’d start there.”

— Melina Marchetta

287. “And then he told me to close my eyes. And I think I’ve been frightened to do just that ever since.”

— Melina Marchetta

288. “He could hardly breathe at the though of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them.”

— Melina Marchetta

289. “When a woman has not received much flattery in her life, she will be seduced.”

— Melina Marchetta

290. “Most of the nicer guys have girlfriends, and we know this because they make it clear the moment we’re introduced, as if to say, “Don’t think about it.” Those particular guys have absolutely no idea what to do with girls who aren’t girlfriends, so at the moment they’re at a bit of a dead loss in the friendship department.”

— Melina Marchetta

291. “On Friday morning, when Eugenia leaves, Rosie bawls, trying to embrace her, but her grandmother isn’t the type. The older woman just keeps on walking until she gets into the cab. It doesn’t mean Eugenia feels less. Martha thinks it means that she feels more, but is worried about the dam that’ll burst if she ever lets the emotion get the better of her.”

— Melina Marchetta

292. “He’s slightly too cool-looking to be considered goofy, but it’s a very fine line that he walks.”

— Melina Marchetta

293. “They either don’t get it or don’t want to. Maybe I’m just not selling it well.”

— Melina Marchetta

294. “The gods whispered to you once, Finnikin. And you listened. But they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals.”

— Melina Marchetta

295. “I get all the criticism about religion, you know, Mr. Ortley. But the thing is, you can’t take it away from people and not leave something else of substance. That’s what your generation will be remembered for. Taking so much away and replacing it with so little of worth.”

— Melina Marchetta

296. “He held up the ring and the light from the rising sun caught the stone and Froi thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. It was the ring that had given him a life he could never have imagined. It was all things magnificent about Lumatere.”

— Melina Marchetta

297. “Thomas Mackee and Jimmy Hailler grasp each other’s hands, one of those brothers-in-arms-we-fought-in-Nam-together grips, but outside this room I don’t think they relate.”

— Melina Marchetta

298. “I am a success at last. We get annihilated. There is no mercy. The word “friendly” is never used in the same context again. “Friendly,” according to The Australian Little Oxford Dictionary, means “acting or disposed to act as friend.” The word “act” is very apt. The girls glare at me. They need to put a face to their misery and I’m it. From then on, whenever someone uses the words “the basketball game,” there is no question which one they are referring to. This.”

— Melina Marchetta

299. “Trevanion wrapped his arm around his son’s neck like shepherd’s hook and dragged him along playfully. when he let go, Finnikin thought he would have liked his father to hold on a moment longer.”

— Melina Marchetta

300. “Froi saw the foolishness of dreamers, and he decided he’d like to die so foolish. With a dream in his heart about the possibilities, rather than a chain of hopelessness. Finnikin had once said it was the only way to live. That he wanted to drown in hope rather than wallow in despair.”

— Melina Marchetta