“We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“I live in the light,
But carry my dark with me.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Life's harder, the deeper you feel things, was all I could think as I put the books away. Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they're like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they're a curse.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“When you're scared you can either give in to the panic and let your mind fall apart, or you can take charge of your mind and think brave.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Life's harder, the deeper you feel things.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“My pen.’ Funny, I wrote that without noticing. ‘The torch’, ‘the paper’, but ‘my pen’. That shows what writing means to me, I guess. My pen is a pipe from my heart to the paper. It’s about the most important thing I own.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Let no stranger intrude here, no invader trespass. This was ours, and this we would defend.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“The world was quickly forgetting us. And there was little news to report.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“One of the things I find strangest and hardest is that we were having such conversations. We should have been talking about discos and electronic mail and exams and bands. How could this have been happening to us? How could we have been huddled in the dark bush, cold and hungry and terrified, talking about who we should kill? We had no preparation for this, no background, no knowledge. We didn’t know if we were doing the right thing, ever. We didn’t know anything. We were just ordinary teenagers, so ordinary we were boring. Overnight they’d pulled the roof off our lives. And after they’d pulled off the roof they’d come in and torn down the curtains, ripped up the furniture, burnt the house and thrown us into the night, where we’d been forced to run and hide and live like wild animals. We had no foundations, and we had no secure walls around our lives any more. We were living in a strange long nightmare, where we had to make our own rules, invent new values, stumble around blindly, hoping we weren’t making too many mistakes. We clung to what we knew and what we thought was right, but all the time those things too were being stripped from us. I didn’t know if we’d be left with nothing, or if we’d left with a new set of rules and attitudes and behaviours, so that we weren’t able to recognise ourselves any more. We could end up as new, distorted, deformed creatures, with only a few physical resemblances to the people we once were.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“A bad black horse steals
Steals into my head
And moves across the landscape
Of my mind, while I sleep.
He does what he likes in there.
Next day I feel
The damage.
In the quiet mist
I watch her go.
It feels like snow.
There's a feeling that I get.
I walk back home
Sad and slow.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“It was the world-without-adults daydream. In my dream I'd never quite figured out where the adults went but we kids were free to roam, to help ourselves to anything we wanted. We'd pick up a Merc from a showroom when we wanted wheels, and when it ran out of petrol we'd get another one. We'd change cars the way I change socks. We'd sleep in different mansions every night, going to new houses instead of putting new sheets on the beds. Life would be one long party.
Yes, that had been the dream.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they're like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they're a curse.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Night started to fall, then it fell, till it was lying all over the ground.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Being brave is a choice you make. You've got to say to yourself: I'm going to think brave. I refuse to think fear or panic.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
“Death comes walking across the countryside swinging that scythe, and he might get you or he might not.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Dead of Night
John Marsden
Born place: in Australia
Born date September 27, 1950
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“You gotta know that. S’important you know.” “Let’s get you to bed.” He suddenly looked around like he was lost. “Shit…” “What?” He looked at Sade confused. “How’d I get in here?” “On your planter.” His face screwed up for a second then he busted out laughing. “Ohhhh my fucking God!” he squealed. “Don’t tell Liberty I knocked that plant over. I didn’t mean it.” “I’ll tell her a rat did it.” “Yesssss.” Sade limped his way to the other side of him when he turned to get off the stool. “A fucking rat.” His silent laughter snorted out. “That would be a big ass rat, right?” “Yes indeed,” Sade said. “How about you get on my back and let me walk you back to your room.” “Awwwwwwww maaaaan, that would be so much faster. The plant-mobile”
― Lucian Bane, quote from No Mercy
“What's up, Tommy?" Newt exclaimed, his face filled with genuine happiness at the pleasant surprise that'd been sprung on them. Thomas couldn't remember exactly how long it'd been since the last time he'd seen Newt. "You look bloody fantastic for three in the morning.”
― James Dashner, quote from The Fever Code
“The entire time she'd watched him - waited for him to join her, even in death - her features had remained serene. A flame in the mist.”
― Renee Ahdieh, quote from Flame in the Mist
“The trains [in a country] contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Ceylonese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar with its gadgets and passengers represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character. At times it was like a leisurely seminar, but I also felt on some occasions that it was like being jailed and then assaulted by the monstrously typical. ”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Great Railway Bazaar
“Quand j'arrive à la gare de l'Est, j'espère toujours secrètement qu'il y aura quelqu'un pour m'attendre. C'est con. J'ai beau savoir que ma mère est encore au boulot à cette heure-là et que Marc est pas du genre à traverser la banlieue pour porter mon sac, j'ai toujours cet espoir débile. [...] Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part... C'est quand même pas compliqué.”
― Anna Gavalda, quote from I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere
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