Top 300 Melina Marchetta Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

253. “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

254. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

259. “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

260. “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

261. “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

262. “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

263. “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

264. “A very underestimated part of the world, The Entrance is.”

— Melina Marchetta

265. “The girls would always tell me not to take things personally, but I never believed there was any other way of taking it.”

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

267. “Sometimes you don’t let us talk about how we’re feeling. If we feel scared, you say, ‘Nothing to worry about, guys,’ but that doesn’t make it go away. It makes it grow.”

— Melina Marchetta

268. “Well, I’m not sure what suspicious looks like. Sometimes when you come down the mountain and stand behind those trees, you look suspicious.”

— Melina Marchetta

269. “Strange? I don’t think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls.”

— Melina Marchetta

270. “Silence is not just about secrecy, Your Majesty. It is grief and it is shame.”

— Melina Marchetta

271. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

273. “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

274. “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

275. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

277. “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

278. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

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

— Melina Marchetta

282. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

284. “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

285. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

287. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

289. “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

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

— Melina Marchetta

291. “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

292. “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

293. “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

294. “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

295. “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

296. “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

297. “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

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. “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

300. “Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.”

— Melina Marchetta