Quotes by Colleen McCullough

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

“It means I dont have much depth of vision,”

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

“I wanted it (the book) to set my cop a very difficult task, which is to find out `whodunit without any of the modern aids of DNA testing and the like,”

“I lived in the US for donkeys years so it has been a journey back in time for me. If you have had personal experience of something, it is always more authentic.”

“It is one of the biggest, best sellers of all time,”

“They (the publishers) would be ecstatic, I just refuse to. You cant repeat a great act.”

“YOU DONT HAVE TO WALK IN A MANS SHOES TO KNOW WHERE HES BEEN. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS, BUY HIM A NEW PAIR, TO GET HIM TO WHERE HES GOING.”

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 does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.

Belief doesnt rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didnt 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.

He owe his wife a debt he couldnt hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly.

He hadnt 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.

Do you realize that youve 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.

We are not here together just to make children, Elizabeth. What were going to do is sanctified by marriage. Its an act of love - of love. Not merely of the flesh, but of the mind and even the soul. Theres nothing about it you shouldnt welcome.

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.

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, thats the price we have to pay for having company in our old age and for ensuring that we have heirs to follow us.

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.

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 our desperate determination never to forget.