The Secret River Quotes

“How short a time a person had to be alive, he thought. How long to be dead.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“Ain't nothing in this world just for the taking...A man got to pay a fair price for taking...Matter of give a little, take a little.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“This place had been here long before him. It would go on sighing and breathing and being itself after he had gone, the land lapping on and on, watching, waiting, getting on with its own life.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“it crossed Farren's mind that although death seemed big, life was even bigger”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“johnny-cakes”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“With no one but blacks around him, other than his own son, Thornhill saw that their skins were not black, no more than his own was white. They were simply skins, with the same pores and hairs, the same shadings of colour as his own. If black skin was all there was to see, it was amazing how quickly it became the colour that skin was.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“Many things in this place were bewildering, but the feel of her body was still the thing he knew best in all the world.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“rain. The”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“Whatever the shadow was that lived with them, it did not belong just to him, but to her as well: it was a space they both inhabited. But it seemed there was no way to speak into that silent place. Their lives had slowly grown around it, the way the roots of a river-fig grew around a rock.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“...the bodies lying like so much fallen timber.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“Every tree, every rock seemed to be watching.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“His rage swelled, sweet and simple.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“The ground was as clear and clean as Sal's own yard.”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“few bricks short of a load,”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River

“knucklebones”
― Kate Grenville, The Secret River