Christos Tsiolkas Quotes & Sayings

I couldn't admit to any of the boys I hung out with that I wanted to fuck 'em, so my erotic life was in my imagination and in the body. — Christos Tsiolkas

His hard cock in one hand. The roof of the caravan is low and he has to crouch. I film his face, move — Christos Tsiolkas

Discomfort is sometimes what is most precious to me about great art. — Christos Tsiolkas

He wanted to say that he'd learned to read in gaol [jail], to really read. He wanted to tell her that the library had been his favorite place inside, that when he read 'As I Lay Dying' he'd found a voice that made sense of time and space as he was experiencing it in gaol, that it had spoken to him more clearly and more profoundly than any voice he'd ever encountered before: of how the past could not be separated from memory, of how it was not only time that changed people, but memory as well. — Christos Tsiolkas

It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language. — Christos Tsiolkas

Transcendence is realising that people do not deserve pity or love or compassion. People deserve contempt. — Christos Tsiolkas

She moved in her world in slow motion. The little pills she took kept her safe, her eyes were empty of colour, of light. Every couple of years Joe's father would take his wife to Greece, make a trek to a valley where the Virgin was said to appear. They would drink the holy water, cross themselves, and still the woman would search through her bag to get to the little pills that kept her sane. Sanity is a chemical reaction. — Christos Tsiolkas

It's alright," they say, "Of course, there's beauty there," but they hold back; you know they have seen or heard of the ugliness and the insularity there. They have experienced the farawayness of it. I have learned to keep silent, not to berate them for their disregard of the Brits' role in the colonial tragedy of my country. — Christos Tsiolkas

I wonder if it is the same for women, whether women always feel this pain when they are fucked? Or is it only in sodomy that pain and pleasure are so linked, so inextricable? — Christos Tsiolkas

He was going to take in, possess the whole of the world. Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi? Fuck off. He wanted more. — Christos Tsiolkas

Everything is fair in love and art. — Christos Tsiolkas

I want two scars, one on each of my shoulder blades."
He shrugged in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Two scars," I repeated, "for where my wings used to be, where my wings were torn away from me. — Christos Tsiolkas

But just because no-one sang the story, no-one wrote the book, no-one filmed it, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. — Christos Tsiolkas

You didn't always have to give it back. And in that cold, somber chapel, Dan Kelly discovered that there were some things that you could not be forgiven for, and those were the things that you carried into the next life, if there was such a place; and if there was no next life nor any God, the consequence was the same: if you were not forgiven, you would die with regret. — Christos Tsiolkas

In the three minutes it takes the song to play I'm caught in a magic world of harmony and joy, a truly ecstatic joy, where the aching longing to be somewhere else, out of this city, out of this country, out of this body and out of this life, is kept at bay. — Christos Tsiolkas

Son, always answer back when you receive an insult. Do it straight away. Even if there's a chance there was nothing behind it, take back control, answer them back. An insult is an attack. You must counter. — Christos Tsiolkas

Contemporary writers annoyed him, he found their worlds insular, their style too self-conscious and ironic. Theirs was not a literature that belonged to him. — Christos Tsiolkas

The best way of writing sex scenes is to do the first draft, orgasm, and then start editing. You can be objective post-orgasm. — Christos Tsiolkas

As a young man he had not dared risk God's wrath by questioning His purpose. Now he did not give a damn. Fuck it. There was no Paradise and there was no Hell and if there was a God, He was worse than inscrutable. What did exist was the cold, cruel truth of a young man, dead - from cancer or a car accident or suicide or God knows what - at the obscene age of thirty-two. — Christos Tsiolkas

The swing between confronting the dangerous or brutal and the beautiful or the kind is one of the elements of being human that I have battled with all my life. That mixture of love and savagery is there in every important relationship in our lives: with parents, siblings, lovers, our closest friends. I have always wanted to be faithful to that truth. — Christos Tsiolkas

It is possible the world is divided into three genders - there are men, there are women and then there are women who choose to have nothing to do with children. How about men without children, he answered quickly, aren't they also different from fathers? She shook her head firmly, daring him to contradict her: no, all men are the same. — Christos Tsiolkas

I like being a faggot, mate, I like it a lot and I think being free in our middle age is what we deserve for straights making our childhood and our teenage years so cuntish. — Christos Tsiolkas

Being working class wasn't about words, it could only be expressed through the body. — Christos Tsiolkas

She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life. — Christos Tsiolkas

What's domesticity? Breakfast in bed? The cuckold going to shoot his wife? Does one inevitably lead to the other? I'm asking because there are no rules anymore and I don't want to end up fucked up. I don't want to destroy anyone through my love. But I don't want to end up chasing intimacy from strangers either. — Christos Tsiolkas

Regrets, of course; only an imbecile did not have regrets. Regrets, some shame, a little guilt. But they had all done the best they could, they had raised their children well, educated them, housed them, made them safe and secure. They had all been good people. Death was never welcome but He always came. It was only to be truly lamented when He took the young, those neither prepared nor deserving of it. Then Death was cruel. Manolis watched the foam rise in the briki and he turned off the flame. — Christos Tsiolkas

In reading he found solitude. In reading he could dispel the blare of the world. — Christos Tsiolkas

Dan had discovered that he had been mistaken, that books did not exist outside of the body and only in mind, but that words were breath, that they were experienced and understood through the inseparability of mind and body, that words were the water and reading was swimming. Just as he had in water, he could lose himself in reading: mind and body became one. — Christos Tsiolkas

Homesickness hits hardest in the middle of a crowd in a large, alien city. — Christos Tsiolkas

Hugo pulled away from Rosie's teat. 'No one is allowed to touch my body without my permission.' His voice was shrill and confident. Hector wondered where he learnt those words. From Rosie? At child care? Were they community announcements on the frigging television? — Christos Tsiolkas

He imagined forgiveness was like flying, that it made you soar. He imagined that it looked like an eagle, a silver bolt in the sky, that it was pure light. — Christos Tsiolkas

I hope for what I always hope for as a writer: a critical but kind reader. I think that is what we all hope for. — Christos Tsiolkas