“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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“They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.”
― Jonathan Swift, quote from Gulliver's Travels
“People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: "A quiet conscience mades one strong!”
― Anne Frank, quote from The Diary of a Young Girl
“But I'd understand if you chose love, Adam love, over music love. Either way you win. And either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love's a bitch.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from If I Stay
“I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Gone Girl
“This is a rule of racing: No race has ever been won in the first corner; many have been lost there.”
― Garth Stein, quote from The Art of Racing in the Rain
What's Left of Me
Evil and the Mask
Guitar Notes
Ink
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