John Marsden
I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.Collection: Climbing
We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.Collection: Butterfly
Don't treat people as you think they are, treat them as you think they are capable of becoming.Collection: Thinking
Life's about a hell of a lot more than being happy. It's about feeling the full range of stuff: happiness, sadness, anger, grief, love, hate. If you try to shut one of those off, you shut them all off. I don't want to be happy. I know I won't live happily ever after. I want more than that, something richer. I want to go right up close to the beauty and the ugliness. I want to see it all, know it all, understand it all. The richness and the powerty, the joy and the cruelty, the sweetness and the sadness. That's the best way I can honour my friends who died.Collection: Hate
My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.Collection: Memories
Writing is not a job or activity. Nor do I sit at a desk writing for inspiration to strike. Writing is like a different kind of existence. In my life, for some of the time, I am in an alternative world, which I enter through day-dreaming or imagination. That world seems as real to me as the more tangible one of relationships and work, cars and taxes. I don't know that they're much different from each other.Collection: Dream
There are some things that once you've lost, you never get back. Innocence is one. Love is another. I guess childhood is a third.Collection: Love Is
Live as though you’ll die tomorrow, but farm as though you’ll live forever.Collection: Motivational
I live in the light, But carry my dark with me.Collection: Dark
Some people wake up drowsy. Some people wake up energized. I wake up dead.Collection: Sleep
Life's harder, the deeper you feel things.Collection: Harder
Sometimes I think I'd rather be frightened than bored. At least when you're frightened you know you're alive.Collection: Thinking
It all began when... they're funny, those words. Everyone uses them, without thinking what they mean. When does anything begin? With everyone it begins when you're born. Or before that, when your parents got married. Or before that, when your parents were born. Or when your ancestors colonised the place. Or when humans came squishing out of the mud and slime, dropped off their flippers and fins, and started to walk. But all the same, all that aside, for what's happened to us there was quite a definite beginningCollection: Mean
the biggest risk is to take no risk. or to take crazy risks.Collection: Crazy
So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.Collection: Pain
So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.Collection: People
At that age you think boys have as much personality as coat hangers and, you don't notice their looks. Then you grow up.Collection: Growing Up
The Bible just said ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath.Collection: Hero
What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.Collection: Hands
Never cry over something that can't cry over you.Collection: Over You
Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.Collection: Time Spent
A few people would suffer, but a lot of people would be better off.' 'It's just not right,' said Kevin stubbornly. 'Maybe not. But neither's your way of looking at it. There doesn't have to be a right side and a wrong side. both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong.Collection: People
The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.Collection: Friendship
All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.Collection: Evil
I knew I was breaking about a dozen laws but I guess I had different attitudes to stuff like that since the war. Laws were for the stupid the immature the irresponsible. The inflexible and the narrow-minded. The prejudiced. The obsessive. The lazy and careless and selfish and spoilt. The violent.Collection: Attitude
Silence, always my fortress, sometimes my prisonCollection: Silence
Pale as ice you passed me by; I wondered what you really felt, And waited through the changing times, To see if you would one day melt. I thought that ice would melt with warmth, But there were thing I did not know: The sun can touch the outer layers But does not reach the deepest snow. Winter sometimes seems like years, Summer's sometimes far away, But winter always turns to summer, As surely as does night to day.Collection: Summer
I didn't confess how wrecked I was. Let them keep thinking I was Superwoman if they wanted. I knew the truth.Collection: Thinking
I feel like I'm dropping such a long way down again." "I seem to be dropping into a cold dark wet place, where no one's been before and noone can every follow. There's no future there; just a past that sometimes fools you into thinking it's the future. It's the most alone place you can ever be and, when you go there, you not only cease to exist in real life, you also cease to exist in their consciousness and in their memories.Collection: Memories
Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does.Collection: Doe
It seems like suffering's the only time we can see what's essential. If peace ever comes back I'm making a vow: I'll design myself special glasses. They'll block out whether people are fat or thin or beautiful or weird-looking, whether they have pimples or birthmarks or different coloured skin. They'll do everything suffering's done for us, but without the pain. I'm going to wear those glasses for the rest of my life.Collection: Beautiful
If you added up all the really significant episodes in your life they'd probably come to less than sixty minutes.Collection: Sixty Minutes
Sometimes I got worried that my memory was falling apart.Collection: Memories
It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.Collection: Thinking
This is the most complicated relationship since Romeo and Juliet," she complained. "You're both hopeless. I mean, what is the big problem? You love him. He adores you. You get together and live happily ever after. Any questions? No, of course not. That'll be ten dollars, thank you.Collection: Mean
Name three types of olives." "Olives! I wouldn't know one type!" "Well, there are three. You can get green ones, you can get black ones, or you can get stuffed.Collection: Names
Well, I’ve learnt this much: it doesn’t matter what it costs, it’s worth paying the price. You can’t live cheap and you can’t live for nothing. Pay the price and be proud you’ve paid it, that’s what I reckon.Collection: Pay The Price
I can't describe the feeling when I go down - it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There's no caramel anymore.Collection: Beer
When you're scared you can either give in to the panic and let your mind fall apart, or you can take charge of your mind and think brave.Collection: Fall
We'd thought that we were among the first humans to invade this basin, but humans had invaded everything, everywhere. They didn't have to walk into a place to invade it.Collection: Firsts
...."we saw this big dark red leech hanging off his back. We were dancing round yelling: ‘We’ll burn it off! Get the petrol! Stay still Mr Kassar, you can trust us!’ He wimped out though, and made us use salt. Very boring.Collection: Dark
Too much thinking, not enough feeling.Collection: Thinking
The world was quickly forgetting us. And there was little news to report.Collection: News
We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy.Collection: Safe
Let no stranger intrude here, no invader trespass. This was ours, and this we would defend.Collection: Stranger
The dreams now were simply of staying alive.Collection: Dream
I wonder if they realize how much I notice about them They probably haven't a clue because I never look at them or show the slightest interest. But I'm very aware of everything. I remember seeing an old film once where a father says to his son: "Son when your mouth's open you're not learning anything." If that's true then I'm well on the way to becoming the world's wisest woman.Collection: Father
Blame it on Peer Pressure.Collection: Pressure
Oh, Homer! You don't have to play dumb anymore! You're not at school now.Collection: School