Geraldine Brooks Quotes & Sayings

“Even the classics that we read to our young children are full of wolves' fangs and burning ovens and bloody feet and ice shards piercing hearts. Even the New Testament climaxes with an act of unspeakable torture. Might as well just read to our kids from the Amnesty Annual Report and be done with it.”

“The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.”

“'You've got mail!' exclaims the cheery automaton at America Online. The flag on the mailbox icon waves invitingly on my computer screen. For a second, I'm 10 years old again, waiting for the postman's whistle to slice the stillness of an Australian afternoon.”

“I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.”

“There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.”

“We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.”

“I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war.”

“September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.”

“Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.”

“I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.”