Quotes from A Killing Frost

“I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“Sometimes I think I'd rather be frightened than bored. At least when you're frightened you know you're alive.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“I didn't confess how wrecked I was. Let them keep thinking I was Superwoman if they wanted. I knew the truth.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“Oh, Homer! You don't have to play dumb anymore! You're not at school now.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“There's no room for anything else. You forget that you're tired or cold or hungry. You forget that banged-up knee and your aching tooth. You forget the past, and you forget that there's such a thing as a future.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, "This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“Sometimes I got worried that my memory was falling apart.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“The dreams now were simply of staying alive.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“We weren't creatures from another planet. We were creatures from Hell.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“They weren't necessarily soldiers, but you didn't have to be soldiers to be affected by it all.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“I was deeply impressed by the fact that my life could lose three days without my having any awareness of it. Maybe this was a preview of death: continuous visions and dreams and vague glimpses of reality. Only with death you never wake up: you keep having the weird images forever.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“I guess you can't live at full-on intensity forever. Lying on the bed of my cell in the dark, trembling, waiting for the soldiers to come in and shoot me - you just can't keep doing that. There's something in the human spirit that won't let you live that way.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“I refuse to think fear. I will think strong. I will think brave.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“This is bigger than a fart in a bathtub, you know.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

“Oh Ellie, doesn’t it make your mouth water?"

"It makes me water all right," I said crudely. "But not from my mouth.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost

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“The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief.

In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?

But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship.

That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide.

The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with lit He of its past glory remaining or appreciated.

The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives.

Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five.

When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.”
― Jung Chang, quote from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“I can awaken things inside you that have been sleeping all your life. You're strong enough to live in the dark, to glory in it. You can become a queen of the shadows. Why not take that power, Elena? Let me help you take it.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Awakening / The Struggle

“It's okay... it will be okay. You're just young. Your'e young and inexperienced, and Kellan is hotter than all fuck.”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Thoughtless

“Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words I AM ALSO AN ALIEN. She had on a black skirt that was frayed at the hem, a worn-out black, mid-length leather jacket, rivet belt, heavy Doc Marten boots, and horizontally striped, green-and-red knee socks. She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind. In other words, she was exceptionally decked out.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Millennium Trilogy

“Hey, I thought you wanted to know about the Sinsar Dubh!” I was so startled by his abrupt departure that I spoke without thinking. I regretted it immediately.

I had no idea where Vlane had gone, or why he‟d disappeared so suddenly, but I decided Id be wise to do the same myself.


Before I could move, a hand closed on my shoulder. “I do, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said grimly. “But first I‟d like to know what the fuck you were doing kissing him.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Faefever

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