Colleen McCullough Quotes

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

No man sees himself in a mirror as he really is, nor any woman.

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

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

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.

" И ето пак: посреща лошото с вдигната глава, поема новия удар- без вик, без сълзи, без протест. Само леко трепва, сякаш да намести товар, за да може по- добре да го носи. И затаи дъх, без дори да въздъхне. "-
Колийн Маккълоу, Птиците умират сами

For the best is only brought at the cost of great pain. Or so says the legend.

Nothing is given without a disadvantage in it,

Всеки от нас носи в себе си нещо, от което не може да се отрече, дори то да ни кара да вием от болка и да призоваваме смъртта.
Такива сме си и това е!

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.

Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness.

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.

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

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.

— Съмнявах се в себе си, Рейн. Винаги съм се съмнявала. И може би винаги ще се съмнявам. — О, херцхен, надявам се, че няма да е така. За мен никога не ще има друга. Само ти. Цял свят го знае от години. Но обясненията в любов не значат нищо. Бих могъл да ти ги повтарям, да крещя дори, без да разсея ни най-малко съмненията ти. Затова не ти говорих за любовта си, Джъстийн; преживявах я. Как можеш да се съмняваш в чувствата на най-верния си поклонник?