Melina Marchetta > Quotes

“It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“If you weren't driving, I'd kiss you senseless," I tell him.
He swerves to the side of the road and stops the car abruptly.
"Not driving any more.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“I can't believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don't feel free. I feel like shit.”
― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”
― Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road

“But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Hold my hand because I might disappear.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“He stops and looks at me. 'I'm here because of you. You're my priority. Your happiness, in some fucked way, is tuned in to mine. Get that through your thick skull. Would I like it any other way? Hell, yes, but I don't think that will be happening in my lifetime.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.”
― Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

“Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don't know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don't know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it already.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.

I counted.

It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Comfort zones are overrated. They make you lazy.”
― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

“Do you think people have noticed that I'm around?”
“I notice when you're not. Does that count?”
― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

“Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?”
― Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

“Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“From this distance everything is so bloody perfect.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.”
― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

“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, The Piper's Son

“How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“A piece of me is gone," she told me once while we were bra shopping. "I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.”
― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

“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, The Piper's Son

“This is the best night of my life," Raffy says, crying.
"Raffy, half our House has burnt down," I say wearily. "We don't have a kitchen."
"Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?" she asks. "We can double up in our rooms and have a barbecue every night like the Cadets."
Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking. Jonah Griggs takes my hand under the table and links my fingers with his and I know that I would sacrifice almost anything just to keep this state of mind, for the rest of the week at least.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Never,' he tells me in a tone full of ice, 'underestimate who or what I care for.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Sir Topher finally looked up. “Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.”
"Then I choose to drown,” Finnikin said. “In hope. Rather than float into nothing.”
― Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

“What are you so sad about? We're going to know him for the rest of our lives.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.
That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin.
And this was her penance.
Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road