Colleen McCullough Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 98 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Colleen McCullough.
Famous Quotes By Colleen McCullough
Old age is an ordeal, of flesh and mind. Of winding down, of slowing down, of dying cells. It's accepting the loss of physical attractiveness and replacing it with the power and wisdom that can only come with old age. — Colleen McCullough
Why shouldn't the living cords which lace our being together flick softly against a loved one in the very moment of their unraveling?...Sometimes, all the miles between are as nothing, sometimes, they are narrowed to the little silence between the beats of a heart. — Colleen McCullough
The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it. — Colleen McCullough
The feeling of coming home, when she didn't want to come home any more than she wanted the liability of love. — Colleen McCullough
Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing. — Colleen McCullough
Living's for those of us who failed. Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world to the rest of us, to rot. — Colleen McCullough
He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly. — Colleen McCullough
What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance? — Colleen McCullough
Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it. — Colleen McCullough
In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination. — Colleen McCullough
She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's. — Colleen McCullough
That's the purpose of old age ... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did. — Colleen McCullough
orgy of sampling Europe's charms, she never went back, and that was strange. In his experience people always — Colleen McCullough
Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didn't know, quite another to face the same dilemma with someone he knew intimately. That was the trouble with beds. They turned strangers into intimates more quickly than ten years of polite teas in parlours. — Colleen McCullough
You say you love me, but you have no idea what love is; you're just mouthing words you've memorized because you think they sound good! — Colleen McCullough
Later on after the war was over the women were to find this constantly; the men who had actually been in the thick of battle never opened their mouths about it, refused to join the ex-soldiers' clubs and leagues, wanted nothing to do with institutions perpetuating the memory of war. — Colleen McCullough
The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did. — Colleen McCullough
She looked like the sort of woman most men would want to get to know because they weren't sure what went on inside. — Colleen McCullough
We are not here together just to make children, Elizabeth. What we're going to do is sanctified by marriage. It's an act of love - of love. Not merely of the flesh, but of the mind and even the soul. There's nothing about it you shouldn't welcome. — Colleen McCullough
on him at the time of his majority, and was more than enough for his needs. He would live his own life, then, far from Melbourne and parents, carve his own kind of niche. But the imminence — Colleen McCullough
My husband says it is very good that I have very tiny feet, because they're easier to get in my mouth. — Colleen McCullough
Corunda Base Hospital itself continued to function on doctors, nurses, domestic staff, food preparers, and ancillary staff in the same old way, so that the patients lived (or died) in relative ignorance of the drama going on at an executive level. Indeed, it was a rare patient even knew that a hospital had executives. — Colleen McCullough
There is no doubt that it is more difficult to read and more difficult to write but I still manage. — Colleen McCullough
Luke's not a bad man, or even an unlikable one," she went on. "Just a man. You're all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don't see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead.
While all the time out there in the cool night there's food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it? No! It's back after the flame again, beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead! — Colleen McCullough
I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer. — Colleen McCullough
But not we men. We weren't fit to be told. For so you women think, and hug your mysteries, getting your backs on us for the slight God did in not creating you in His image. — Colleen McCullough
The law should not be a huge and weighty slab which falls upon a man and squashes him into a uniform shape, for men are not uniform. — Colleen McCullough
Love isn't truly the body. Love is freedom to roam the heart and mind of the beloved. — Colleen McCullough
But I'll pin you to the wall on your own weakness, I'll make you sell yourself like any painted whore." Mary Carson to Father Ralph. — Colleen McCullough
He hadn't wooed her, but had simply claimed her. A gold mine ready to dig. There should have been a period of quiet dinners together, of flowers rather than diamonds, of kisses given after permission to kiss, of a slow awakening that predisposed her to greater intimacies. But no, not the great Alexander Kinross! He had met her, he had married her the next day, and climbed into her bed after one kiss in the church. There to prove himself an animal in her eyes. One mistake after another, that was the story of his relationship with Elizabeth. And Ruby had always meant more. — Colleen McCullough
Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. — Colleen McCullough
Lares of the Crossroads — Colleen McCullough
I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens. — Colleen McCullough
There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it's life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it's nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it's best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it." ~ Colleen McCullough — Colleen McCullough
The Greeks say it's a sin against the gods to love something beyond all reason. And do you remember that they say when someone is loved so, the gods become jealous, and strike the object down in the very fullness of its flower? — Colleen McCullough
I stopped this one about two months before federation and I want the next one to be more political. It will deal with the formation of white Australian policy and things like that. — Colleen McCullough
How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things. — Colleen McCullough
All that appearance business is crap, and I'm not even going to be bothered arguing with you about it. — Colleen McCullough
There was some justice in his pain — Colleen McCullough
Perfection in anything is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection. — Colleen McCullough
Age brought wisdom, but it also brought a genuine gratitude for the happiness of sharing life with someone as much liked as loved. — Colleen McCullough
He had always been her baby, her lovely little boy; though she had watched him change and grow with proprietary pride, she had done so with an image of laughing baby superimposed on his maturing face. — Colleen McCullough
Best of all she liked his eyes, such a translucent golden brown, and so laughing. — Colleen McCullough
Yet there's something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred. — Colleen McCullough
There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart. — Colleen McCullough
No man sees himself in a mirror as he really is, nor any woman. — Colleen McCullough
Caesar's kindnesses are conscious, done for Caesar's benefit, and Caesar no longer sees the world as a place wherein magical things can occur. Because they can't. Men and women ruin it with their impulses, desires, thoughtlessness, lack of intelligence and cupidity. — Colleen McCullough
It's not worth getting upset about, Mrs. Dominic. Down in the city they don't know how the other half lives, and they can afford the luxury of doting on their animals as if they were children. Out here it's different. You'll never see man, woman or child in need of help go ignored out here, yet in the city those same people who dote on their pets will completely ignore a cry of help from a human being. — Colleen McCullough
Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research. — Colleen McCullough
she sat rocking his head back and forth, back and forth, until his grief expended itself in emptiness. — Colleen McCullough
I escaped the torture of my childhood home by reading. To this day it is still one of my greatest pleasures. — Colleen McCullough
In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary. — Colleen McCullough
went to the cross eight months before His — Colleen McCullough
We're working-class people, which means we don't get rich or have maids. Be content with what you are and what you have. — Colleen McCullough
Nothing is given without a disadvantage in it, — Colleen McCullough
There's a hell of a lot of horny people out there who are not being gratified in the way they should be. — Colleen McCullough
His sudden and utterly overwhelming panic was over almost before it began; but not quickly enough. In the midst of his brief yet total terror, the King of Pontus shat himself. It went everywhere, solid faeces mixed with what seemed an incredible amount of more liquid bowel contents, a stinking brown mess all over the gold-encrusted purple cloth of his cushion, trickling down the legs of his throne, running down his own legs into the manes of the golden lions upon the flaps of his boots, pooling and plopping on the deck around his feet when he jumped up. And there was nowhere to go! He could not conceal it from the amazed eyes of his attendants and officers, he could not conceal it from the sailors below amidships who had looked up instinctively to make sure their King was safe. — Colleen McCullough
But work used to be the lot of every man, and now it is rapidly becoming an aristocratic privilege. Men nowadays are more often paid not to work. — Colleen McCullough
I am writing a sequel to The Touch because I want to further explore the Chinese question that I have raised. There will be more about that in a sequel. — Colleen McCullough
I can't share your love of God. But I do understand your need to give your life to him. Each of us has within us something that just won't be denied. Something to which we are driven even though it makes us scream aloud to die. — Colleen McCullough
Rain, rain, rain. Like a benediction from some vast inscrutable hand, long withheld, finally given. The blessed, wonderful rain. For rain meant grass, and grass was life. — Colleen McCullough
sold into an indentured servitude — Colleen McCullough
My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow. — Colleen McCullough
Then God's a bigger poofter than Sweet Willie. "You might be right" said Justine. "He certainly isn't too fond of women, anyway. Second-class, that's us, way back in the Upper Circle. Front Stalls and the Mezzanine, strictly male. — Colleen McCullough
It's no fun to be a bluestocking in a family of jockstraps. — Colleen McCullough
Do you realize that you've been married to me for just about half of your entire life?"
Her head came down, her eyes opened wide to stare at him. "Is that all?" she asked. "It seems an eternity".
"Did I say a quiet lion?" Alexander pulled a face. "An eternity with me has turned you into a bitch, my dear". — Colleen McCullough
Love and hate are cruel, only liking is kind — Colleen McCullough
It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice. — Colleen McCullough
Until you can leave the matter of forgiveness to God, you will not have acquired true humility. — Colleen McCullough
I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it's the kind you read with one hand. — Colleen McCullough
He best is only bought at the cost of great pain ... or so says the legend — Colleen McCullough
Meggie dropped to her knees, scrambling frantically to collect the miniature clothes before more damage was done them, then she began picking among the grass blades where she thought the pearls might have fallen. Her tears were blinding her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for. — Colleen McCullough
When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it. — Colleen McCullough
Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here, nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life. — Colleen McCullough
There's a story ... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree ... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings ... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles. — Colleen McCullough
father could hope for in a son.To have — Colleen McCullough
The best thing about being 40 is that you can appreciate 25-year-old men more. — Colleen McCullough
I have discovered," he said to Charles Dewy, "that when a man marries, peace of mind and freedom go out of the window."
"Well, old boy," said Charles comfortably, "that's the price we have to pay for having company in our old age and for ensuring that we have heirs to follow us. — Colleen McCullough
And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget. — Colleen McCullough
Oh, that feels good! I don't know who invented ties and then insisted a man was only properly dressed when he wore one, but if I ever meet him, I'll strangle him with his own invention — Colleen McCullough
My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people. — Colleen McCullough
All that power held dormant, sleeping, only needing the detonation of a touch to trigger a chaos in which mind was subservient to passion, mind's will extinguished in body's will. — Colleen McCullough
Never forget, Caelius, that a great man makes his luck. Luck is there for everyone to seize. Most of us miss our chances; we're blind to our luck. He never misses a chance because he's never blind to the opportunity of the moment. — Colleen McCullough
The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more. — Colleen McCullough
Dr. Murray made it clear to me before I left that a woman who enhoys the Act is as loose as a harlot. God gives pleasure in it only to husbands. Women are the source of evil and temptation, therefore women are to blame when men fall into fleshly error. It was Eve who seduced Adam, Eve who entered into league with the serpent, who was the Devil in disguise. So the only pleasure women are allowed is in their children. — Colleen McCullough
If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you! — Colleen McCullough
It's a woman's book but I think the men will read it too. — Colleen McCullough
Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn't share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak. — Colleen McCullough
Why is it, Caesar, that there's always a man like Lucius Metellus?" "If there were not, Antonius, this world might work better. Though if this world worked better, there'd be no place in it for men like me," said Caesar. — Colleen McCullough