Best 51 quotes of Colleen Mccullough on MyQuotes

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.

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

Best of all she liked his eyes, such a translucent golden brown, and so laughing.

duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.

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.

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.

I escaped the torture of my childhood home by reading. To this day it is still one of my greatest pleasures.

I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else Ive 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.

I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it's the kind you read with one hand.

It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

Love and hate are cruel, only liking is kind

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.

My husband says it is very good that I have very tiny feet, because they're easier to get in my mouth.

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

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.

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.

Perfection, in anything, is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.

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.

..the best is only bought at the cost of great pain...or so says the legend

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.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

There's a hell of a lot of horny people out there who are not being gratified in the way they should be.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

There is no doubt that it is more difficult to read and more difficult to write but I still manage.

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.

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.

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.

What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance?

Yet there's something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred.

As separações são o que mais custa, Tim! É muito difícil aceitá-las, principalmente quando gostávamos dessa pessoa. A separação significa que depois disso nunca mais somos os mesmos, que perdemos qualquer coisa, uma parte de nós mesmo que nunca mais reencontramos nem pode ser substituída. Mas temos de passar por muitas separações, Tim, porque fazem parte da vida, tal e qual como conhecer pessoas novas.

Às vezes a distância não conta, pensou, às vezes reduz-se ao silêncio breve que espaça as batidas de um coração.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think I'll wear the Chian outfit,' he said to his body servant standing waiting for orders. Many men in Marius's position would have lain back in the bath water and demanded that they be scrubbed, scraped, and massaged by slaves, but Gaius Marius preferred to do his own dirty work, even now. Mind you, at forty-seven he was still a fine figure of a man. Nothing to be ashamed of about his physique! No matter how ostensibly inert his days might be, he got in a fair amount of exercise, worked with the dumbbells and the closhes, swam if he could several times across the Tiber in the reach called the Trigarium, then ran all the way back from the far perimeter of the Campus Martius to his house on the flanks of the Capitoline Arx. His hair was getting a bit thin on top, but he still had enough dark brown curls to brush forward into a respectable coiffure. There. That would have to do. A beauty he had never been, never would be. A good face - even an impressive one - but no rival for Gaius Julius Caesar's!

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.

Quand vous avancerez en âge, vous vous apercevez que la vie est faites de rencontres, de connaissances et de séparations. Parfois, nous aimons les gens que nous rencontrons, parfois, nous ne les aimons pas, mais les connaitre est ce qu'il y a de plus important dans la vie, c'est cela qui fait de nous des être humains.

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.

The best thing about being 40 is that you can appreciate 25-year-old men more.

Until you can leave the matter of forgiveness to God, you will not have acquired true humility.

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.

We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but 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.

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.