Anita Heiss > Quotes

“Using Wiradjuri language on the cover of my novel makes a strong statement … regarding the reclamation and maintenance of the traditional language of my family.”
― Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray

“Who do we know in Canberra who wears a suit?’ Libby asked. ‘More importantly, who looks good?’ I asked. ‘Stephen Smith,’ Libby offered. ‘Wayne Swan,’ Denise countered. ‘Peter Garrett?’ Libby asked ‘Greg Combet, most definitely,’ I insisted. ‘Julia Gillard,’ Libby said adamantly. Both Denise and I looked at her strangely. ‘What? Seriously, she wears a suit better than any of those guys. Especially that purple one she has.”
― Anita Heiss, Manhattan Dreaming

“How can you possibly be an agent of positive change in the world when you are full of bitterness and hatred?”
― Anita Heiss, Am I Black Enough For You?: 10 Years On

“I know who I am until somebody questions it, and then I have to start all over again. It’s exhausting.”
― Anita Heiss, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia

“I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realise, but now it’s so obvious that underneath the invisible barriers and expectations we have constructed and placed on each other, we are all brothers and sisters; we are all just pink flesh and bone.”
― Anita Heiss, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia

“When I met Oodgeroo, I met my mother: not just Dossie’s poise, eyes and Lindt-like skin, but the funny-bugger with a steak knife, buried, a serrated intensity that unsettled me—a boy of elocution lessons and an easier ride,      25 a man of lighter brown travelling, whose tab of overt intolerance came in at insults and one lost girlfriend. I wasn’t there when indignity did its daily round—rarely blunt, rather, a pointed      30 needling that cut near the core, left wounds that broke their stitches every morning I did know that the sharp steel about Oodgeroo was also about my mother. On campus—”
― Anita Heiss, Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature

“Collective Hierarchy Community Individual Cooperation Competition Culture Capitalism”
― Anita Heiss, I'm not racist, but...: A Collection of Social Observations

“If you think about the map of Europe with Italy and Germany and Spain and all the different people and cultures, well, Australia is like that. And the white people from England, they are like a lot of noisy, angry visitors on a holiday that never really ends,' Mary giggles to herself”
― Anita Heiss

“do not take freedom           25 for granted for she is a very fickle lover she will leave you in a heart beat           30 ’cos for now she is married to colonisation a cruel and murderous spouse           35 if you were doin’ time like a fine wine, brother you would make a beautiful bouquet”
― Anita Heiss, Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature