Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.

In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie Fall on Your Knees, they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

Depression is anger slowed down panic is grief speeded up.

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.