Quotes by Colleen McCullough

About Colleen McCullough:

Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Colleen McCullough

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

Colleen McCullough

Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didn't know, quite another to face the same dilemma with someone he knew intimately. That was the trouble with beds. They turned strangers int...

Colleen McCullough

We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own ...

Colleen McCullough

How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things.

Colleen McCullough

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

Colleen McCullough

Living’s for those of us who failed. Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world to the rest of us, to rot.

Colleen McCullough

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.

Colleen McCullough

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 ...

Colleen McCullough

But not we men. We weren't fit to be told. For so you women think, and hug your mysteries, getting your backs on us for the slight God did in not creating you in His image.

Colleen McCullough

Perfection in anything is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.

Colleen McCullough

Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here, nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life.

Colleen McCullough

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

Colleen McCullough

She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's.

Colleen McCullough

I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it's the kind you read with one hand.

Colleen McCullough

I am writing a sequel to The Touch because I want to further explore the Chinese question that I have raised. There will be more about that in a sequel.

Colleen McCullough

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

Colleen McCullough

I stopped this one about two months before federation and I want the next one to be more political. It will deal with the formation of white Australian policy and things like that.

Colleen McCullough

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

Colleen McCullough

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary.

Colleen McCullough

Author Bio

  • NameColleen McCullough
  • DescriptionAustralian author
  • AliasesColleen Margaretta McCullough
  • BornJune 1, 1937
  • DiedJanuary 29, 2015
  • CountryAustralia
  • ProfessionWoman Of Letters; Novelist
  • WorksThe Thorn Birds
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Order Of Australia