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Category: John Marsden

The Bible just said ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath.

So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It’s like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn’t be human, wouldn’t exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn’t be the person I am.

human, identity, stories

A few people would suffer, but a lot of people would be better off.”It’s just not right,’ said Kevin stubbornly. ‘Maybe not. But neither’s your way of looking at it. There doesn’t have to be a right side and a wrong side. both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong…

morality, right, sides, stealing

It’s good to keep changing your mind. It shows you’re thinking. I’ll only stop changing my mind when I’m dead. And maybe not even then.

changing, thinking

Life’s harder, the deeper you feel things, was all I could think as I put the books away. Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they’re like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they’re a curse.

emotions, feelings

We’ll never feel safe again, and so it’s bye-bye innocence. It’s been nice knowing you, but you’re gone now.

innocence, john-marsden, tomorrow

But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I’d done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.Instead I had Hell.

child, parents, safe, young

I can’t describe the feeling when I go down – it’s down down down and there’s never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn’t good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There’s no caramel anymore.

Some people wake up drowsy. Some people wake up energized. I wake up dead.

sleep, waking-up

That night in bed I was thinking about the way creeks and streams operate. They start off little, gurgling and bubbling and jumping over rocks and stuff, full of energy, going all over the place. Then they get older and bigger, become rivers, take a more definite course, stick to their path, know where they’re going, get slower and wider. And eventually they reach the ocean and become part of this vast mysterious world of water that stretches away forever.Yep, just like people.

inspirational-life, life-and-death, life-changing

Light is important to us humans. It influences our moods, our perceptions, our energy levels. A face glimpsed among trees, dappled by the shadows and the green-tinged light reflected from the forest, will seem quite different to the same face seen on a beach in hard, dry, sunlight, or in a darkening room at twilight, with the shadows of a venetian blind striped across it like a convict’s uniform.

It’d be funny if one of them was called Gavin. Funny but irrelevant.