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.
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.
Some of us weren’t born for rewards, Froi. We were born for sacrifices.
It’s against the rules of humanity to believe there is nothing we can do.
What if she’s all I give you in this life of ours, my love?” she asked quietly. “Then I’ll shout at the goddess in fury,” he said fiercely. “I’ll beg to know why I’ve been given so much when other men have so little.
Are you an idiot, or an idiot?’ Gargarin hissed.’The first one. I really resent being called the second.
What’s with what you’re wearing?” Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.”It’s pretty hideous, isn’t it?” I say.”Don’t force me to look at it,” he says. “It’s see-through.”That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.
Don’t believe in God. Love the world just the way it is.
It’s like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel.
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.
Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing.
He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.
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.
Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.
Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.
I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it.” But she’s crying herself now. “He’d be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.
Was. What does was actually mean? The verb to be. Past tense of is. Does it mean that someone is no longer being?
Stani walks in later, glaring at them both.“Bloody bastards. One minute punching each other, next minute reading poetry. What’s wrong with everyone this week?”Tom can tell that
Worse still, he doesn’t know how to follow the piper anymore because it’s a path Tom has lost faith in.And the piper knows it. Tom can see it in his father’s eyes now. And the more he stares, the clearer it becomes.
She knows that feeling too. Of believing that each time someone says her name, it’s to tell her that something bad has happened.
We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy. “And if he thinks he’s eating with us, he’s got another thing coming,” my dad says.Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them.”Lamb roast. Am I invited?
Phaedra looked across the water and her eyes met Lucian’s. Their needs came second. It came from the privilege of being tr
The people I’m stuck with in my life now aren’t sucking the life out of me, they just suck.
We’re not eight kingdoms, but an entire land with one heartbeat. It’s why people like you and I need to record our people’s stories so we can find those moments when our paths cross, and only then will we know true peace.
There’s nothing to took forward to any more if you don’t have dreams,” he said. “Because dreams are goals and John might have run out of goals. So he died.
Mercy’, Finnikin said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘We’re going to have a bed full of children and I’ll have to holler out to my wife, “Hello there! It’s been a long time since we last spoke!
When a woman has not received much flattery in her life, she will be seduced.
It’s against the rules of humanity to believe there is nothing we can do.
Lucian’s father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day’s work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.
And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.
I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven’t. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don’t want to leave it, others because the world around them won’t let them in.
He could hardly breathe at the though of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them.
Men don’t rape women because their women are ugly,” cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. “That’s what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.
There’s not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.
…I don’t believe you should be a virgin when you get married,’ Sera said. ‘You should experiment. Men do”Yes, but only if you’re in love with them,’ I said.
A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we’re still trying to fit in as ethnics and we’re still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians.
Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.
I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.
He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it’s likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.
It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It’s what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.
People divulge things to you that they would not divulge to anyone else.
In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.
They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.
Do not cry,” she said fiercely, but her own tears flowed. “Do not cry, Finnikin. For if we begin, our tears will never end.
How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?
Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.
We didn’t let them do anything to us, Travanion,” Beatriss said fiercely, “They did it without out permission.
I need voices of reason and of hysteria and of empathy. I need to have an Alanis moment. I need advice from Elizabeth Bennett. I need Tim Tams and comfort food.
If you close your eyes, you get to control your own darkness.
The gods do make playthings of us. But it is we mortals who provide them with tools.
God knows what possessed me, but having that science book in my hand propelled me to immediate action. So I hit her with it.
Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?
Tom always did anger well. Hid it well, but showed it even better
Just ask how I’m feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.But no one does.
Sometimes you don’t let us talk about how we’re feeling. If we feel scared, you say, ‘Nothing to worry about, guys,’ but that doesn’t make it go away. It makes it grow.
We have a dilemma, then,” Finnikin said fiercely. “Because I prayed that you would grow old and hold my children in your arms as you held me. My prayers have not been answered yet, Trevanion. So whose prayer is more worthy? Yours or mine?
When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord.
He took my hand, made me stand on the branch and asked, “What can you see from here?” “Nothing” I said,”Know what I can see? From this distance everything is so bloody perfect”.
Mama says that satisfaction isn’t what I should search for. Respect is. Respect?I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
If there was one weapon he had against these savages, it was not acknowledging their existence.
I’m scared to die,” I whispered as Michael walked in.”He was scared to live,” he said kissing my forehead.
Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.
He just watched the way Finnikin’s hands rested on Evanjalin’s neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself.
And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for.He wished that he had never met any of them.
But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I’m tired and the feeling that I’ve had for a while-that something is haunting me down-becomes all consuming and I’m frightened that one morning there will be not enough to keep me going.
If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she’d never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.
The pages aren’t numbered, so I don’t know whether I have the beginning or end or whether it’s in sequence but these days I’m not really looking for continuity.All I’m after is something that makes sense to me.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I’m torn.
I hope you’re not smoking in front of her,’ Lucia says to him.’Yeah, I lie in bed and puff in her face, Lucia,’ he says, irritated.
I never thought meeting you would be this boring. I thought we’d put our Italian emotion into gear and scream the place down. I never expected indifference.
I hear Mr. Palmer tell Hannah that it was an electrical fault. Five arsonists in one school and it ends up being something so technically boring.
But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile.
But Froi looked around with wonder. As if he had never seen the world from up so high before.
I determine my own worth. If I had to rely on others, I’d have lain down and died waiting.
If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one’s worth came from others.
Because today, I think I’m leaning on the side of wonder.
His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I’ve never really heard what a sex god sounds like, I can’t verify that.
Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.
Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.
At times it’s like sadness has planted itself on her face, refusing to leave, an overwhelming sadness, and sometimes I see despair there, too.
I’ve wept enough in my life. I have no tears left.
But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.
I’d run you know. It’s like when you’re really busy doing something and you don’t have time to think about things. Well, I’d run and run and run so I couldn’t think.
He bursts out laughing. It’s short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction’s already mine.
The gods whispered to you once, Finnikin. And you listened. But they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals.
She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That’s the difference between us and the others.
Even five minutes of your time can make someone’s day,
Imagine the state of one’s mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Lights and noise and strangeness. It’s no wonder we scream with terror at our birth.
Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.
Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That’s all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.
One of Sir Topher’s rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.
Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive.
City people. They may know how to street fight but they don’t know how to wade through manure.
Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian’s mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds.
You blame me for this, don’t you?” he says.”I don’t need to. You’re doing a better job.