Jackie French Quotes & Sayings

For me books have always been an incredibly solid part of my life, both as escapism and simply as resource. — Jackie French

Books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat it because it's good for you. Books drag you in because they are fascinating. — Jackie French

At least in a book I am away from my body for a while. But I want to do things, not just read about them. I want my life. — Jackie French

I've always found the world is the most extraordinarily fascinating place and the more data you get, the more you can actually put pieces into this jigsaw. — Jackie French

When someone is missing the really hard thing is that you never really do give up hope, even though the inquest says that she is dead, even though right from the beginning we already knew that we wouldn't see her again. — Jackie French

You're a heroin Flinty McAlpine. I reckon you can do anything you set your mind to. — Jackie French

Life should be good - Life should be very, very good - and the only duty we have to the dead is to make it good for ourselves and other people. — Jackie French

We need to actually teach kids that books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat every bit on your plate. It's like secret adult's business. It's the secret we never, ever tell our children. No adult ever read a book because it's good for us. We read because it is fun. — Jackie French

If you want intelligent children give them a book. If you want more intelligent children give them more books. — Jackie French

Maybe everyone is crazy up in these mountains. Maybe the air up here makes you absurd, the scent of flowers and rock and snow. And I've never spoken like that to anyone in my life before. You're my only friend here, you know that? And you're fifty years away. — Jackie French

There is still in many schools complete misapprehension that children with reading difficulties are stupid. It is so easy to teach a child that they're dumb. There needs to be a recognition that you need different ways to teach children who have got reading problems. — Jackie French

I waved and cried and smiled at the same time like Mum and Mrs Mack, so Sandy and Jeff remember us smiling not sobbing as they left. — Jackie French

I might be able to find out what happened 6,000 years ago but I will never know what happens 6,000 years in the future! And that is not fair, blast it. — Jackie French

I don't read like other people do - back and forth, across the page. I tend to scan a page at a time. — Jackie French

Lady Dance's music wasn't a magic charm. I'd misunderstood. We had all failed to understand. The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. 'Rejoice,' came the soft voice of Lady Dance in my mind. 'Watch the moon and stars ... ' Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free. — Jackie French

No women allowed.'
'I'm not a woman. I'm the boss. — Jackie French

I'd love to see a new form of social security ... everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled. — Jackie French

A kingdom needs tending, just like a cheese. Leave a cheese too long and the whey settles to the bottom and sours the whole. Leave a kingdom for too long and others rise to the top and take the whole. — Jackie French

Dance, my darling dance! If you dance then death can't catch you! Nothing bad can touch you! Dance! — Jackie French

One of my extraordinary regrets about my death is not so much that it's going to happen but simply that I'll never know what happens next. — Jackie French

Who was Hitler" demanded little Tracy
"He was this bloke in World War Two" explained Ben. — Jackie French

I do read very, very quickly. I do process data very quickly. And so I write very quickly. And it is embarrassing because there is a conception that the things that you do quickly are not done well. I think that's probably one of the reasons I don't like the idea of prolific. — Jackie French

You get through bad things - I know, enough bad things have happened to me already. But I don't think getting through one bad time makes it any easier to deal with the next one. If anything, it's worse, because there is happiness to remember. — Jackie French

I think my body knew before my mind did. Or maybe I just refused to listen to what I knew. — Jackie French

Mobile phones would have wrecked the plots of most of Shakespeare's plays. — Jackie French

The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. — Jackie French

A book can change the world ... Every book a child reads creates new neurons in that child's brain. — Jackie French

We're all bits that the war didn't take, Flinty thought, gazing at the stranger's back. But those left behind had a right to know more about the beast who'd chewed their lives and spat the remnants out. — Jackie French

Often the true hero and heroines of my books are the houses, the places, the communities where people find a home. — Jackie French

I'm very close to my parents. I admire them and respect them enormously. But my childhood unfortunately coincided with the end of their marriage. They are two people who should never, ever have got married. — Jackie French

If something is worth doing you may as well go heart and soul and boot leather. — Jackie French

With life came loss. The war and the years since had taught her that. There's be sadness in her life to come, as well as happiness. Even the most blessed lives had both. She'd live them as they came. — Jackie French

Morning: Slept.
Afternoon: Slept.
Evening: Ate grass.
Night: Ate grass. Decided grass is boring.
Scratched. Hard to reach the itchy bits.
Slept. — Jackie French

Dad called this the shadow time. The sun sucks colour from the world, he'd said. He'd taught her to see the softer colours of the dusk, the green and orange bark, the purple shadows. At times like this Flinty felt her edges vanish, leaving her part of the mountains, like the wallaby pulling wonga vine down from a thorn bush, or the sleepy possum peering from a tree. — Jackie French

They'd manage. Her ghost from the future had said so. He'd been right about the bad coming. Now she had to trust good would come as well. — Jackie French

I don't finish a lot of the books I read. I get enormous pleasure from reading half f them, two-thirds of them, even incredibly good books. But I don't feel it's my duty to finish them. I read the last few pages and find out what happens at the end. — Jackie French

Have you noticed how every tree is different here? All twisted by the wind and snow, but if that was all, they should have been twisted in the same way. It's as though every tree has made up its own mind exactly how it wants to grow. — Jackie French

I think of pain differently now. There is pain that hurts, pain that is so bad you can no longer feel it. Your body just says 'hold on'. — Jackie French

A lot of dyslexic kids are actually more intelligent than average and are very good, because they've got very good memories, at disguising the fact that they can't read or have got problems in reading and literacy. — Jackie French

Why is it that you can bear pain, but someone's kindness makes you cry? — Jackie French

Very much in my books people find not surrogate families because they are real families. We've got families that we're related to by blood but we've also got families that we acquire. And those too I think are pretty much part of my books. — Jackie French

I think I have probably adjusted the way I see the world, I interpret the world and I communicate the world into book format simply because of this familiarity. Possibly in another society and another context I might have been a storyteller or who knows what. — Jackie French

What was war really like? What vast crack had buried Jeff down in the mud, had sent Andy off with cattle? What had changed her best friend so much he could barely look at her now? — Jackie French