Quotes from Darkness, Be My Friend

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“Well, I’ve learnt this much: it doesn’t matter
what it costs, it’s worth paying the price. You can’t live cheap
and you can’t live for nothing. Pay the price and be proud you’ve
paid it, that’s what I reckon.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“You can never stay angry too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it's soothing or restful, because it's not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know that I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually remember noticing anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with its teeming ants. The tattered ribbons of paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears.

Just the bush.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“I guess our fate is up to us now. And we’ve
been there before, of course. There’s something quite comforting
about it in a strange way. We’ve learnt a few things. We know we’ve
got a few things going for us. A bit of imagination, a bit of guts
sometimes, a bit of spark.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“There's nothing like the very early morning. It's the sweetness of the air, the sweet coolness; it's the bubbling of the creek which, for some strange reaction, always sounds more energetic than it does later on; it's the gargling of the magpies.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

“What we needed was a two-sided badge that said ‘Mature’ on one side and ‘Childish’ on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend

About the author

Popular quotes

“There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.”
― Gavin de Becker, quote from The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

“Only you have to keep practicing and remembering.”
― Frederik Pohl, quote from Gateway

“Ve yine can sıkıntısı bastırıyor; can sıkıntısının, ozanın ve öğretmenin baskısı altında gerçeklik ağırdan ağıra bir ülkü dünyasına dönüyor ki ver artık hayali, verdikçe ver – ve artık neyin hakiki, neyin genel anlamda hiç var olmadığını, gerçeğin nerede, kuruntunun nerede olduğunu, ne hissedildiğini, neyin hissedilmediğini, doğallık nerede, yapmacılık nerede kimse bilmiyor; olması gerekeni oynuyor, kaçınılmaz olanla karışıyor ve biri diğerini saf dışı bırakıyor, biri diğerinin her türlü varoluş hakkını elinden alıyor oy, gerçek dışılığın büyük okulu oy! Dolayısıyla ben de tastamam beş saat boyunca kendi ülkümü hayal edip durdum; boşlukta suratım bir balon gibi büyüdü, hiç engelle karşılaşmadan – çünkü kurgusal dünyada, gerçekdışı dünyada onu normale döndürecek hiçbir şey yoktu.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, quote from Ferdydurke

“Those words, though heaven only knew how often she had heard them, still gave her her thrill. They braced her like a tonic. Life acquired significance. She was about to step from the world of make-believe into the world of reality.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Theatre

“Our memories make us... even the darkest of them all.”
― Nalini Singh, quote from Archangel's Consort

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.