“It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“If you weren't driving, I'd kiss you senseless," I tell him.
He swerves to the side of the road and stops the car abruptly.
"Not driving any more.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Hold my hand because I might disappear.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“He stops and looks at me. 'I'm here because of you. You're my priority. Your happiness, in some fucked way, is tuned in to mine. Get that through your thick skull. Would I like it any other way? Hell, yes, but I don't think that will be happening in my lifetime.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don't know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don't know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it already.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“From this distance everything is so bloody perfect.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Never,' he tells me in a tone full of ice, 'underestimate who or what I care for.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking. Jonah Griggs takes my hand under the table and links my fingers with his and I know that I would sacrifice almost anything just to keep this state of mind, for the rest of the week at least.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“This is the best night of my life," Raffy says, crying.
"Raffy, half our House has burnt down," I say wearily. "We don't have a kitchen."
"Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?" she asks. "We can double up in our rooms and have a barbecue every night like the Cadets."
Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.
That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin.
And this was her penance.
Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“What are you so sad about? We're going to know him for the rest of our lives.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Maybe memories should be left the way they are.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.
"It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say.
"Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through."
That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Guess what?' Fitz said.
'I don't know,' Jude said. 'What? Narnie smiled?' He glanced at her for the first time.
'When you guys see a Narnie smile, it's like a revelation,' Webb said, gathering her towards him.
Jude stopped in front of her and, with both hands cupping her face, tried to make a smile. Narnie flinched.
'Leave her alone,' Tate said.
'I need a revelation,' Jude said. 'And you're the only one that can give me one, Narns.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes - the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“I'm very disturbed to find out that the leader of the Townies has a soul and I'm beginning to develop a bit of a crush on him.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Don't believe in God. Love the world just the way it is. ”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been. Because who they were had always been determined by him.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being part of him. Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
“Do you think I don't want him to be gone more than you do? I do. Because I need to know that I can still breathe properly when he's not around. If something happens to him, I have to know that I won't fall apart...”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta
Born place: Sydney, Australia
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“Asking himself how this had happened and what could be done about it, Peter came to understand that the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men’s minds. He grasped that it had been the Renaissance and the Reformation, neither of which had ever come to Russia, which had broken the bonds of the medieval church and created an environment where independent philosophical and scientific inquiry as well as wide-ranging commercial enterprise could flourish. He knew that these bonds of religious orthodoxy still existed in Russia, reinforced by peasant folkways and traditions which had endured for centuries. Grimly, Peter resolved to break these bonds on his return.”
― Robert K. Massie, quote from Peter the Great: His Life and World
“Nookie.” I giggle because the word itself is funny but hearing her say it makes it even more so. “I’m going to give you some advice because you’re still a new wife—and because my son can be a little shit at times. I know; I’m his mum.” She looks around as though she’s about to reveal top-secret information. “Nookie equals power and there’s a reason he wants it from you all the time. It levels the playing field. Don’t like something he’s doing? Take the nookie away. Get the results you want. Need him to see things your way but he refuses? Withhold the nookie and he’ll make the fastest attitude adjustment you’ve ever seen. Want your husband to retire because he’s going to work himself into an early grave and miss his grandchildren growing up the way he missed his kids? Close the gates of nookie and get your husband home with you instead of burying him. That’s how you work it, darling. You use the power of the nookie to get the results you want.”
― Georgia Cates, quote from Beauty from Love
“History is full of decapitations, and Iowa is no exception.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle
“My favorite book is God-Shaped Hole. It’s not a classic. It’s better than a classic. It’s a modern-day tragedy. I’ve never read Moby-Dick but I can almost bet it doesn’t leave you feeling like you have less skin than before you opened the book.”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from Without Merit
“Even people who are entirely strange and indifferent to one another will exchange confidences if they live together for a while, and a certain intimacy is bound to develop.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Elective Affinities
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