Woman Reading

Australian Author, Melina Marchetta

She writes human emotion and relationships in the simplest and most beautiful way.  She sneaks up on you like a ninja and before you know it you're sobbing.  

She's magic.

Looking for Alibrandi:

“Living is the challenge. Not dying. Dying is so easy. Sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. But living? That can take you eighty years and you do something in that time.” 

Saving Francesca:

“The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.”

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. 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.”

The Piper's Son:

“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.”

Finnikin of the Rock: 

“Finn, listen!" Trevanion said, his voice raw."I prayed to see you one more time. It's all I prayed for. Nothing more. And my prayers were answered. Go east, I'll lend them west."
"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?

Froi of the Exiles: 

"See these seven, Jory," he asked, fury in his voice.  "Well, imagine you were on one side of the stream hiding, while on the other side of the stream someone slaughtered your lads and cousins, right in front of you.  And there was nothing you could do, Jory, because we were holding you down to stop you from being slain yourself."

Lucian then grabbed Phaedra.

"Lucian!" Yata warned.

"And see this woman, Jory," he said, turning Phaedra around gently and revealing the strange lettering on her neck.  "This woman is just like our queen.  Marked as a slave to do things we don't want to imagine happening to our own."

Lucian pulled Jory towards Phaedra.  "Treat her as you would beloved Isaboe, Jory.  Follow her everywhere she goes.  Down the valley and across the stream.  Everywhere.  And if any man touches her, Mont or Charynite, you put a sword through his heart.  Do you hear me?"

  Quintana of Charyn: 

"Froi saw the rage in Arjuro’s eyes, his clenched fists.
‘If I could find the men who did those things to you as a child I would tear them limb from limb.’
Froi embraced him.
‘One day,’ Froi said, clearing his voice of emotion, ‘I’ll introduce you to my queen and my king and my captain; and Lord August and Lady Abian, who have given me a home; and the Priestking and Perri and Tesadora and my friend Lucian; and then you’ll understand that I would never have met them if you hadn't journeyed to Sarnak all those years ago, Arjuro. And if the gods were to give me a choice between living a better life, having not met them, or a wretched life with the slightest chance of crossing their path, then I'd pick the wretched life over and over again.’
He kissed Arjuro’s brow. Finnikin called it a blessing between two male blood kin. It always had made Froi ache seeing it between Finnikin and Trevanion.
‘I'd live it again just to have crossed all of your paths. Keep safe, Arjuro.

***

Even reading and typing up these quotes is bringing tears to my eyes.  Everything she writes gets right inside me and sets up home.