Thomas Mackee and Jimmy Hailler grasp each other’s hands, one of those brothers-in-arms-we-fought-in-Nam-together grips, but outside this room I don’t think they relate.
I remember love. It’s what I have to keep on reminding myself. It’s funny how you can forget everything except people loving you.
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.
Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a stroke, an action with one’s hand. But not every man knows how to lead.
Mia’s mother, Nonna Celia, is to blame for that, because she’s a prophet of doom. Every time I’d ask her if we could go someplace the next day or next week, her reply would be, “We might not live that long.” If I’d say, “See you tomorrow,” her answer would be, “If that’s what God wants.” Leaving so much to fate has kept me an insomniac for most of my life...
And tonight I’ll be with friends and family, which is what life is all about.
You’re judging her by her literacy,’ Tara says. ‘You’re a literacist.
A tradition that we’ll never let go. A tradition that I probably will never let go of either, simply because like religion, culture is nailed into you so deep you can’t escape it. No matter how far you run.
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.
I get all the criticism about religion, you know, Mr. Ortley. But the thing is, you can’t take it away from people and not leave something else of substance. That’s what your generation will be remembered for. Taking so much away and replacing it with so little of worth.
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.
I’m frightened to look at myself in the mirror because maybe nothing’s there.
I’m just sick of all the misery, my absolute lack of control over everything.
I feel tears well in my eyes and I can’t even stop them from happening. I can’t stop anything from happening in my life.
If you close your eyes, you get to control your own darkness.
If the munchkin, whose face I used to wash, tries to explain to us what a sixty-niner is, I’m going to report myself to child protection.
You can’t hate what you’re part of. What you are. I resent it most of the time, curse it always, but it’ll be part of me till the day I die.
In an instant he forgot Joe’s poem about Japan except the part about ‘you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,’ and a new sound entered his life, like when he was a kid and he first heard the sound of horses clip-clopping and he asked his mother in wonder, “What’s that sound, because I’ve never heard it before?
Guilt is a burden, so forgive yourself for the mistakes.
And he knew that, but all his life he’d been treated like crap to the point that he believed he was crap. He’d never done anything good and nobody had ever said anything positive about him.
Then choose another bond. One written by yourself. Because it is what you do for strangers that counts in the end.