youth fiction Quotes

“So my final school year began. I had promised myself that I would be a saint for this year alone. I would make the greatest impression on my teachers and become the model student. I knew it would all fail. But just not on the first day. Sister Gregory walked toward me, and when she was so close that I could see her mustache, she held out her hand. ‘Show me what you’re reading.’ ”

“Religion class, first period Monday morning, is the place to try to pull the wool over the eyes of Sister Gregory. (She kept her male saint’s name although the custom went out years ago. She probably thinks it will get he into heaven. I don’t think she realizes that feminism has hit religion and the female saints in heaven are probably also in revolt.) ‘Would you like to explain yourself, Josephine?’ ”

“My name, by the way, is Josephine Alibrandi and I turned seventeen a few months ago. (The seventeen that Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth.) I’m in my last year of high school at Sr. Martha’s, which is situated in the eastern suburbs, and next year I plan to study law. For the last five years we have been geared for this year. The year of the HSC (the High School Certificate), where one’s whole future can skyrocket or go down the toilet, or so they tell us.”

“I could see the English guys who live on the bottom floor of our terrace house sitting on the front veranda, stripped to the waist and drinking beer. They used to be backpackers, living the youth hostel up the road, before deciding they wanted more privacy. I get on really well with one of them. His name is Gary and he’s from a place called Brighton in England. He always invites me for a cup of tea, which is so strange.”

″ The door opened, and far white flakes fo snow swirled in, to faint away into water as they met the hear of the parlor. The incomers, Herr Ringelmann the clockmaker and his apprentice, Karl, stamped their boots and shook the snow off their greatcoats. ‘It’s Herr Ringelmann’ said the Burgomaster. ‘Well, old friend, come and drink some beer with me! And a mug for young what’s his name, your apprentice. It’s your day of glory tomorrow, my boy!’

“In the farmyard, Fly the black and white collie was beginning the training of her four puppies. For some time now they had shown an instinctive interest in anything that moved, driving it away or bringing it back, turning it to left or right, in fact herding it...She set them to work on Mrs Hogget’s ducks.”

Lovely story of kindness and consideration trumping bullying and intimidation. Although clearly written in another age it is timeless, without being patronising, suitable for all children.

“She had been angry the day she came down with the flu and had a temperature of 103° and had to miss the special Children’s Concert that the Boston Symphony was doing, and her parents gave the tickets to the terrible Truesdales who lived in the upstairs apartment.”

A family secret, a miraculous transformation, an Internet stranger, a friendly American scientist, and a girl with the strength to make it all come out right.

“The way to outsmart death, Elisa dear, is to turn into something else, says Elisa’s grandmother, an actress with a flair for the dramatic. But when it seems as if Nonna might actually be changing literally, Elisa must uncover a series of mysteries.”

“Otis Gardiner, pots man, Jack-of-all-trades and smooth tongued entrepreneur, ranted non-stop. It was side of Otis that not everyone saw; he could be so attractive, so charming, so sweetly spoken. A young man still, he had wide, appealing, brown eyes and shoulder-length

″...when I caught sight of the Casermette. A few of these narrow row houses were lived in, with small, well-kept gardens full of roses. But in most of them, the windows had been barred for years and there were brambles outside, not roses. ”

A sad, sweet tale of a lonely girl (I don’t remember them mentioning her age, but I’d guess eleven or so) in an orphanage. Although the story is set in Germany in the early 1950s, it could come from just about any time or place.

Hopeful of a less brutal life, he escapes to Sydney - only to be further disillusioned.

Two years after the Last Days, Australia has become a dangerous place, and a battle-ground for survival.

“That promise about turning over a new leaf wasn’t just talk: there were no more dangerous escapades for a while. It could be Johnny was now so well known, he didn’t need to prove himself any more.”

“He could see the dingo immediately above him, its coat a deep gold in the sunlight, its head cooked curiously to one side. Its eyes, he notices, conveyed a sense not of alarm, but of trust.”

“His face was the colour of a well-worn polished brown boot. The skin was creased but still young and suppple-not that you could see much of his face for it was almost entirely hidden by a head and beard of wild white hair.”

“I could hardly have been more wrong. Only the tired stoop of his body and the loose, mottled skin of his forearm betrayed his age.”

“The afternoon sunlight frames the head of Miguel Alberti, the Silver Lion, as he stands to speak. He wears a white suit. In his hand he hold a green panama. ‘People of Chile.... Compañeros!’ His arm is a spear, upraised. ‘Comrades in hope.’ Cheers roll under the caverns of the stadium like sea breakers.”

They stand eye-to-eye on either side of the wolf’s enclosure and, slowly, each makes his own extraordinary story known to the other.

“It was that which first made me understand the enormity of what had happened. Nuclear missiles had fallen on England, and if they’d fallen on England they must have fallen on a lot of other countries too. This rain, black rain, was falling now on each of them.”

“But there’s something bothering the wolf. A silly detail. He’s only got one eye and the boy’s got two. The wolf doesn’t know which of the boy’s eyes to stare into. He hesitates. His single eye jumps, right-left, left-right. The boy’s eyes don’t flinch.”

“The boy mysteriously appears at the wolf’s cage. “He stands there silently, without moving a muscle. Only his eyes shift.”

“Through further conversation, Dinah gathers that the main target of the boy’s animosity is directed towards the school’s Headmaster.”

“The idea had been enthusiastically adopted by an ecology-conscious Earth, and one of the items on my father’s agenda was to negotiate an acknowledgement in terms of royalties of the Lunar discovery.”

“The door swung open behind me, letting in a shaft of light and a babble to excited voices. There was a waft of exotic perfume. Real French perfume! The ferry from Earth must have arrived.These would be passengers on Moon Safari.”

“Hazel Green knows there’s something fishy going on, but what could it be? ”

“Hazel promises not to tell anyone, and she finally solves the mystery without giving away Mr. Pertrusca’s secret.”

″ In a desperate chase through the mountains, it seems there is no longer anywhere for him to run to...”

″ The eleven-year-old is suddenly aware of the life he will be leaving behind and recounts his memories of the many people in his village and their stories.”