Quotes from The Piper's Son

“Maybe she'd always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them. ”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“I’m scared I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a state of yearning, regardless of where I am.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it's likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Ned?' he says, after a while. 'Oi, Ned?'
'What?'
'If someone says to you that the guy they're going out with doesn't have to prove how smart he is, what's your response?'
'That he's dumb.'
'And if he has a sixpack?'
'Dumb jock.'
'Not too intense.'
'Dumb jock with no personality.'
'And they see eye to eye?'
Ned pauses. 'With the spitfire from Dili?'
'Same,' Tom corrects.
Ned holds up a hand to where Tara would reach him in height.
'Dumb jock with no personality and short-man syndrome.'
'Thanks, Ned.'
'Anytime.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Don't let anyone take care of you. Can you maybe leave that for me to do? I mean, take care of you? Feel free to take care of me in return... because I think I'll need you to do that.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“...women are elephants and watch the way you say that in front of them because they'll think you're calling them fat and there's no coming back from that moment. But they hoard. They say they don't, but they do. We think that if something's not spoken about again, it goes away. It doesn't. Nothing goes away just like that...”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Once she made him watch Pride and Prejudice and for ages he would re-word Mr Bingley's apology to Jane Bennet, saying, 'I've been an inexplicable fool', for anything from losing his keys to burping out loud. Her reply to anything she wanted to do was Jane Bennet's response to Bingley's marriage proposal, 'A thousand times yes.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“She's tired and leans her head on his shoulder, which is the resting place for all their heads, but when Justine and Siobhan and Francesca use his body so shamelessly he doesn't feel the need to turn his head and press his mouth against their hair.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don't want my parents or brother knowing, Will's like, 'We'll deal with it.' He's never said, 'I'll fix it up.' He just says, 'You're not up to going back to uni to finish your Honours this year? Big deal. There's next year. We'll deal with it.'" She nods. "That's what he does well.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“How would you like it if I said to you, 'It kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit beautiful?" he had asked, pissed off.

She hadn't said anything then, which was rare for her.

"Would you have been lying?" She said after a long silence.

"Lying about what?"

More quiet.

"About me being a tiny bit beautiful."

"Shit, yeah."

-

But later that night, he had sent her a message on MSN.

Of course I was lying. The "tiny" bit part, anyway.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Come here,” she says.
“No, you come here.”
“I said it first.”
“Rock paper scissors.”
“No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.”
Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“The two horsewomen of the apocalypse still win, despite their dwindling numbers.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Love’s easy. It kind of comes with the territory. But liking is another story.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“She looks at Sam. 'Close your ears if you don't want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,' she says, and he blocks his ears.
'It's Sam's?' Jonesey asks, surprised, just as he gets a message.
'Where have you been, Jonesey?' Bernadette says. 'In La La Land?'
'Contrary to popular belief, I think it has no penis,' Georgie whispers to them while Lucia covers Sam's ears.
Jonesey looks up from his text messaging, shocked. 'Poor little guy.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Logical Tom begs emotional stupid dickhead Tom not to ask the question.
'Are you alone?' he asks quietly.
He hears her breathing so close to his ear.
'Yes.'
'Good,' he says, his voice croaky. 'I'll sleep like a baby.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Her voice whispering love soothes him. They'd never done that before. Weren't that type of family. Except now he doesn't know what kind of family they are. What word is it that can define them? What would they call his family in the textbooks? Broken? He comes from a broken home. The Mackees can't be put back together again. There are too many pieces of them missing.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“She misses him more now than when he was away”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Tom always did anger well. Hid it well, but showed it even better”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“If I did something to hurt Frankie and she said that I was never getting near her heart again, I’d spent the rest of my life trying anyway. That’s the difference between you and me, Tom. I’d go back to the moment it all fell apart and I’d start there.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“I can do oblivion, you know. I can do it better than him. I'd like to see how he likes it if I just disappear from his life without a word. It was okay for him to keep in contact with Georgie and my mum, but not once did he pick up the phone or write to me. Like I was fucking nothing to him. Like I'm nothing to no one.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Play me something that makes me feel;
This soul inside me is made of steel.
Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating
And, babe, I need you to make things real.
Walk inside me without silence,
Kill the past and change the tense.
Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring;
Take me places that make more sense.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true.

The first name shatters him.

The second makes his head spin.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“He came third in the state for woodwork,”
Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.
Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“The string slices into the skin of his fingers and no matter how tough the calluses, it tears.

But this beat is fast and even though his joints are aching, his arm's out of control like it has a mind of its own and the sweat tat drenches his hair and face seems to smother him, but nothing's going to stop Tom. He;s aiming for oblivion.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“You can know someone all your life, like your parents or family, but I’ll tell you this, Ned. There’s an expression on their face, or a tone in their voice, or a way they walk, that you’ve never ever seen before.
Like they’ve kept it hidden. Until their brother dies. Or their son. I remember those days and they were like these strangers and I wanted to say, Who are you people?”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“she could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"
the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear.
"it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment.
"sorry?" tom says.
"she didn't cry"
"then what?"
it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower.
"i cried"
luca bursts out laughing beside will.
"yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

“A very underestimated part of the world, The Entrance is.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“Do you believe you can change your destiny?' he (Sajhë) said, seeking an answer.
Alice found herself nodding. 'Otherwise, what's the point? If we are simply walking a path preordained, then all the experiences that make us who we are - love, grief, joy, learning, changing - would count for nothing.”
― Kate Mosse, quote from Labyrinth

“Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it,” Harry answered. “It’s a methodology.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Snowman

“I had never before spent a night with a woman, had someone lying by my side in the quietness of the dark, hearing her breath and feeling her warmth beside me.
It is a sin, and it is a crime. I say it frankly, for I have been taught so all my life, and only madmen have said otherwise. The Bible says it, the fathers of the church have said it, the prelates now repeat it without end, and all the statues of the land prescribe punishment for what we did that night. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. It must be so, for the Bible speaks only God’s truth. I sinned against the law, against God’s word reported, I abused my family and exposed them even more to risk of public shame, I again risked permanent exclusion from those rooms and books which were my delight and my whole occupation; yet in all the years that have passed since I have regretted only one thing: that it was but a passing moment, never repeated, for I have never been closer to God, nor felt His love and goodness more.”
― Iain Pears, quote from An Instance of the Fingerpost

“She felt like she was walking up on a wounded animal, unsure if reaching out to him was going to win her a bit of uneasy trust or a vicious taste of fang and claw.”
― Lara Adrian, quote from Midnight Rising

“It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this."

I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.

"Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea."

"The board-schools."

"Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

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.