Melina Marchetta

It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.

He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it's likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.

How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.

I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.

I don't despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life. Not to mend my broken bones, Arjuro. I needed my brother to mend my broken spirit.

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.

A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians.

What about the contacts your mum had?_ his dad asked.__ rang and spoke to four very polite computers who gave me all these options and then cut out on me. Then I tried the post office, because they were advertising, and I spoke to another computer. Very rude, that one. Don__ think it recognized __re you shitting me?_ as an option.___ou know why that is?___hy is that, Dominic?_ Tom had asked drolly, because he knew he was going to be told why.__ecause we don__ live in a society anymore, Tom. We live in an economy. We__e not citizens. We__e customers. That__ what this government__ done to us.

Don't believe in God. Love the world just the way it is.

...I don't believe you should be a virgin when you get married,' Sera said. 'You should experiment. Men do''Yes, but only if you're in love with them,' I said.

I remember passion.

There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.

Truth is dangerous.

Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. "That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.

He could hardly breathe at the though of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them.

I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven't. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don't want to leave it, others because the world around them won't let them in.

And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.