Quotes by Colleen McCullough

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and...”

“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.”

“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 permissi...”

“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"."Di...”

“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 sou...”

“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, therefo...”

“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 fo...”

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

“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.”

“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...”

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

“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 ou...”

“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, t...”

“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 samp...”

“Lukes not a bad man, or even an unlikable one, she went on. Just a man. Youre all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes ...”

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

“He was, he admitted, a man who liked to have his cake and eat it too.”

“How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things.”

“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 wo...”

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