Jackie French > Quotes

“Books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat it because it's good for you. Books drag you in because they are fascinating.”
― Jackie French, author

“Morning: Slept.
Afternoon: Slept.
Evening: Ate grass.
Night: Ate grass. Decided grass is boring.
Scratched. Hard to reach the itchy bits.
Slept.”
― Jackie French, Diary of a Wombat

“Dance, my darling dance! If you dance then death can't catch you! Nothing bad can touch you! Dance!”
― Jackie French, Lady Dance

“Why is it that you can bear pain, but someone's kindness makes you cry?”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“Have you noticed how every tree is different here? All twisted by the wind and snow, but if that was all, they should have been twisted in the same way. It's as though every tree has made up its own mind exactly how it wants to grow.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“I think of pain differently now. There is pain that hurts, pain that is so bad you can no longer feel it. Your body just says 'hold on'.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“You get through bad things - I know, enough bad things have happened to me already. But I don't think getting through one bad time makes it any easier to deal with the next one. If anything, it's worse, because there is happiness to remember.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“At least in a book I am away from my body for a while. But I want to do things, not just read about them. I want my life.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“Life should be good - Life should be very, very good - and the only duty we have to the dead is to make it good for ourselves and other people.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“Lady Dance's music wasn't a magic charm. I'd misunderstood. We had all failed to understand. The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. 'Rejoice,' came the soft voice of Lady Dance in my mind. 'Watch the moon and stars...' Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free.”
― Jackie French, Lady Dance

“Maybe everyone is crazy up in these mountains. Maybe the air up here makes you absurd, the scent of flowers and rock and snow. And I've never spoken like that to anyone in my life before. You're my only friend here, you know that? And you're fifty years away.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“Dad called this the shadow time. The sun sucks colour from the world, he'd said. He'd taught her to see the softer colours of the dusk, the green and orange bark, the purple shadows. At times like this Flinty felt her edges vanish, leaving her part of the mountains, like the wallaby pulling wonga vine down from a thorn bush, or the sleepy possum peering from a tree.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“I think my body knew before my mind did. Or maybe I just refused to listen to what I knew.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“I'd love to see a new form of social security ... everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled.”
― Jackie French, New Plants from Old: Simple, Natural, No-cost Plant Propagation

“I waved and cried and smiled at the same time like Mum and Mrs Mack, so Sandy and Jeff remember us smiling not sobbing as they left.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“We're all bits that the war didn't take, Flinty thought, gazing at the stranger's back. But those left behind had a right to know more about the beast who'd chewed their lives and spat the remnants out.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“With life came loss. The war and the years since had taught her that. There's be sadness in her life to come, as well as happiness. Even the most blessed lives had both. She'd live them as they came.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“You're a heroin Flinty McAlpine. I reckon you can do anything you set your mind to.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“No women allowed.’
'I’m not a woman. I’m the boss.”
― Jackie French

“What was war really like? What vast crack had buried Jeff down in the mud, had sent Andy off with cattle? What had changed her best friend so much he could barely look at her now?”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“They'd manage. Her ghost from the future had said so. He'd been right about the bad coming. Now she had to trust good would come as well.”
― Jackie French, The Girl from Snowy River

“Mobile phones would have wrecked the plots of most of Shakespeare's plays.”
― Jackie French, Ophelia: Queen of Denmark

“Why were humans so good at not seeing anyone who didn't fit into their vision of how things should be?”
― Jackie French, If Blood Should Stain the Wattle

“A kingdom needs tending, just like a cheese. Leave a cheese too long and the whey settles to the bottom and sours the whole. Leave a kingdom for too long and others rise to the top and take the whole.”
― Jackie French, Ophelia: Queen of Denmark

“Teachers had told her she was intelligent. Friends had said so too, often slightly accusatory as if being intelligent had made her too different to be quite comfortable with.”
― Jackie French, The Ghost by the Billabong

“I had found I could best be a good daughter by making sure my father never guessed what to forbid.”
― Jackie French, Ophelia: Queen of Denmark

“I knew this was a jewel of a day that would glow bright for my whole life, brighter than any ruby in Macbeth's crown.”
― Jackie French, Third Witch

“them.”
― Jackie French, Pennies for Hitler

“People take you at your own evaluation, or at least the value that you appear to show.”
― Jackie French, The Ghost by the Billabong

“Darling Jed. One day wee are all going to die. That should make us love each other more, not less. Use the time we are given."
"That sounds very wise. But doesn't it just mean life hurts you more?"
"It means you pay for love," said Nancy. "But it is always worth it.”
― Jackie French, If Blood Should Stain the Wattle