“Homesickness hits hardest in the middle of a crowd in a large, alien city.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“In reading he found solitude. In reading he could dispel the blare of the world.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“Son, always answer back when you receive an insult. Do it straight away. Even if there’s a chance there was nothing behind it, take back control, answer them back. An insult is an attack. You must counter.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“I like being a faggot, mate, I like it a lot and I think being free in our middle age is what we deserve for straights making our childhood and our teenage years so cuntish.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“He was going to take in, possess the whole of the world. Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi? Fuck off. He wanted more.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“I want two scars, one on each of my shoulder blades.”
He shrugged in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Two scars,” I repeated, “for where my wings used to be, where my wings were torn away from me.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“I wonder if it is the same for women, whether women always feel this pain when they are fucked? Or is it only in sodomy that pain and pleasure are so linked, so inextricable?”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“Being working class wasn’t about words, it could only be expressed through the body.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“It’s alright,” they say, “Of course, there’s beauty there,” but they hold back; you know they have seen or heard of the ugliness and the insularity there. They have experienced the farawayness of it. I have learned to keep silent, not to berate them for their disregard of the Brits’ role in the colonial tragedy of my country.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“I suppose he did – you cannot get further than Australia, can you, lad?”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“He imagined forgiveness was like flying, that it made you soar. He imagined that it looked like an eagle, a silver bolt in the sky, that it was pure light.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“She didn’t call people cunts anymore. Now she said she had problems with the word cunt. She said it was sexist – and if not sexist, they were racist, and if not racist, they were het-er-o-NORM-a-tive, a word he always had to spell out in his head to remember. He could never remember what it meant but he assumed it had to be bad.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
“Contemporary writers annoyed him, he found their worlds insular, their style too self-conscious and ironic. Theirs was not a literature that belonged to him.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda
Christos Tsiolkas
Born place: Melbourne, Australia
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“I am a hopeless romantic. A silly, ridiculous, foolish romantic. I live in a fantasy land. I need to get real. And now, for the first time, I want to get real. I want a real relationship with a real man in the real world–-with all the real problems, faults, and whatever comes with it.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Me and Mr. Darcy
“He leaned back for a moment to tug her shirt down her arms, with the same wicked, lovley smile that had first stolen her breath years ago.”
― Melissa Marr, quote from Darkest Mercy
“My brothers are idiots.
Anyone can see that under the scars and the attitude, Isabeau is more fragile than she looks. And as a reclusive Hound princess, her first introduction to the royal family shouldn’t be a dose of Hypnos and four idiots gawking at her.
If I’d managed not to gawk, they sure as hell could have. She was beautiful, fierce, and utterly unlike anyone I’d ever known.
It was really hard not to gawk.
Much better to pace outside her door with one of our Bouviers sitting at the top of the stairs watching me curiously.
“This sucks, Boudicca,” I told her. “I don’t think we inherited Dad’s diplomacy.”
She laid her chin on her paws. I could have sworn she rolled her eyes.”
― Alyxandra Harvey, quote from Blood Feud
“Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if he doesn’t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator.’ ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself ‘What ho! A Dictator!’ and a Dictator he had proved to be. I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham. ‘Well, I’m dashed! I thought he was something of that sort. That chin…Those eyes…And, for the matter of that, that moustache. By the way, when you say “shorts”, you mean “shirts”, of course.’ ‘No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.’ ‘Footer bags, you mean?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How perfectly foul.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from The Code of the Woosters
“I don't tell him I couldn't have gorged if I'd tried, my stomach stuffed full of butterflies and grown-up worries.”
― Emily Murdoch, quote from If You Find Me
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