Colleen McCullough Quotes

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.

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

You still think love can save us. It’s more killing than hate. Hate is so clean, so simple. Like being in the ring. With hate, you just keep hitting. You hit until they stop hitting back. With love… They never stop.

For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.

Но да разбереш грешката си, не значи още, че можеш да я поправиш.

Ir iš tiesų netrukus tekančio vandens šniokštimas pamažu nustelbė visur aplinkui šlamančius medžius, tyliai kalbančius vieni su kitais alsia, gailia šneka, kokia ramiomis dienomis prabyla eukaliptai.

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

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.

Ôi, cuộc sống là một cực hình ghê gớm. Ta chỉ có đủ can đảm đi men bên rìa cuộc sống.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.