“It is possible the world is divided into three genders - there are men, there are women and then there are women who choose to have nothing to do with children. How about men without children, he answered quickly, aren't they also different from fathers? She shook her head firmly, daring him to contradict her: no, all men are the same.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Hugo pulled away from Rosie’s teat. ‘No one is allowed to touch my body without my permission.’ His voice was shrill and confident. Hector wondered where he learnt those words. From Rosie? At child care? Were they community announcements on the frigging television?”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Regrets, of course; only an imbecile did not have regrets. Regrets, some shame, a little guilt. But they had all done the best they could, they had raised their children well, educated them, housed them, made them safe and secure. They had all been good people. Death was never welcome but He always came. It was only to be truly lamented when He took the young, those neither prepared nor deserving of it. Then Death was cruel. Manolis watched the foam rise in the briki and he turned off the flame.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Queria passar mais uns minutos no mundo que não fosse dominado pela hierarquia e o snobismo e a vingança.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“E quem é que os americanos não destruíram? Olha o que eles estão a fazer no Médio Oriente. É a mesma coisa.
…Mas os Vietnamitas derrotaram-nos, porque eram um povo unido. Ao contrário dos idiotas dos Árabes… os Ingleses puseram-nos uns contra os outros há cem anos e eles são demasiado ignorantes para o perceberem. Se fossem unidos, podiam conquistar o mundo.
…A América não vai deixar ninguém conquistar o mundo, a não ser eles próprios. Rebentam com todos nós antes de deixarem seja quem for levar vantagem.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“As a young man he had not dared risk God’s wrath by questioning His purpose. Now he did not give a damn. Fuck it. There was no Paradise and there was no Hell and if there was a God, He was worse than inscrutable. What did exist was the cold, cruel truth of a young man, dead—from cancer or a car accident or suicide or God knows what—at the obscene age of thirty-two.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
Christos Tsiolkas
Born place: Melbourne, Australia
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“It’s dark as a tomb in here,” she said, unable to see more than shadows. “Will you light the candles, please,” she asked, “assuming there are candles in here?”
“Aye, milady, right there, next to the bed.” His shadow crossed before her, and Elizabeth focused on a large, oddly shaped object that she supposed could be a bed, given its size.
“Will you light them, please?” she urged. “I-I can’t see a thing in here.”
“His lordship don’t like more’n one candle lit in the bedchambers,” the footman said. “He says it’s a waste of beeswax.”
Elizabeth blinked in the darkness, torn somewhere between laughter and tears at her plight. “Oh,” she said, nonplussed. The footman lit a small candle at the far end of the room and left, closing the door behind him. “Milady?” Berta whispered, peering through the dark, impenetrable gloom. “Where are you?”
“I’m over here,” Elizabeth replied, walking cautiously forward, her arms outstretched, her hands groping about for possible obstructions in her path as she headed for what she hoped was the outside wall of the bedchamber, where there was bound to be a window with draperies hiding its light.
“Where?” Berta asked in a frightened whisper, and Elizabeth could hear the maid’s teeth chattering halfway across the room.
“Here-on your left.”
Berta followed the sound of her mistress’s voice and let out a terrified gasp at the sight of the ghostlike figure moving eerily through the darkness, arms outstretched. “Raise your arm,” she said urgently, “so I’ll know ‘tis you.”
Elizabeth, knowing Berta’s timid nature, complied immediately. She raised her arm, which, while calming poor Berta, unfortunately caused Elizabeth to walk straight into a slender, fluted pillar with a marble bust upon it, and they both began to topple. “Good God!” Elizabeth burst out, wrapping her arms protectively around the pillar and the marble object upon it. “Berta!” she said urgently. “This is no time to be afraid of the dark. Help me, please. I’ve bumped into something-a bust and its stand, I think-and I daren’t let go of them until I can see how to set them upright. There are draperies over here, right in front of me. All you have to do is follow my voice and open them. Once we do, ‘twill be bright as day in here.”
“I’m coming, milady,” Berta said bravely, and Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve found them!” Berta cried softly a few minutes later. “They’re heavy-velvet they are, with another panel behind them.” Berta pulled one heavy panel back across the wall, and then, with renewed urgency and vigor, she yanked back the other and turned around to survey the room.
“Light as last!” Elizabeth said with relief. Dazzling late-afternoon sunlight poured into the windows directly in front of her, blinding her momentarily. “That’s much better,” she said, blinking. Satisfied that the pillar was quite sturdy enough to stand without her aid, Elizabeth was about to place the bust back upon it, but Berta’s cry stopped her.
“Saints preserve us!”
With the fragile bust clutched protectively to her chest Elizabeth swung sharply around. There, spread out before her, furnished entirely in red and gold, was the most shocking room Elizabeth had ever beheld: Six enormous gold cupids seemed to hover in thin air above a gigantic bed clutching crimson velvet bed draperies in one pudgy fist and holding bows and arrows in the other; more cupids adorned the headboard. Elizabeth’s eyes widened, first in disbelief, and a moment later in mirth. “Berta,” she breathed on a smothered giggle, “will you look at this place!”
― Judith McNaught, quote from Almost Heaven
“There is always a use for everything, Victor had told him. Even pain.”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from Airman
“There comes always a moment when the desire to act, however ill the cause, is stronger than the wish to listen.”
― Kate Mosse, quote from Sepulchre
“GEORGE : Oh, don’t be so proud of yourself, Bennie—just
because you look eccentric.
BENEATHA: How can something that’s natural be eccentric?
GEORGE: That’s what being eccentric means—being
natural. Get dressed.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, quote from A Raisin in the Sun
“Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler
The Pecan Man
Fall of Night
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