Little Gods Quotes

“To stand by and watch her cool interactions with others - even adults - was thrilling for a boy like Peter. He was someone who listened to the grown-ups and did what they told him. He'd realised the adult way was not a choice but a rule until you were a grown-up yourself and got your own turn. But Olive May Lovelock, she was taking her turn now.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“Jethro had a scar near one of his eyes, an angry tear that scraped through his eyebrow and reached up to his forehead where it disappeared beneath his hairline. In winter he wore black motorcycle boots and a checked sheepskin jacket that was orange and brown. He had sideburns like a man and the other kids said his eyes were like laser beams in comics, that your face would explode if he even looked at you. That was why he wore those steel-rimmed reflective sunglasses, they said, as he cruised around in his car with his hairy arm out the window, fingers spread wide on the door.

Jethro Sands was like the scariest crackers on Guy Fawkes Night. He was the loudest thunder, the meanest dog. Out of everyone she was scared of Jethro Sands the most. She imagined buildings and trees bursting into flame on either side of the road as he drove along, turning his head slowly from side to side. He was threatening, noxious. Dark.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“As the years started to pull behind her like toffee, her mind always managed to find itself at her uncle and aunt's farm. And whenever she returned to those dark sticky years, it was still surprising how it all unravelled so quickly, the summer she turned twelve.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“It was children who got possessed by the spirits most easily.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“She was inbetween, with her childhood at the back of her and something illogical and confusing that loomed in front.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“Grace was in the ground, she was safe, she was hidden. No one could find her and hurt her any more.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“The Mallee floor discombobulated the young Lenore and Edgar.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“You carry your past with you and along the way it repeats.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“Memories get you where they want you, not the other way around.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“Out of everyone she was scared of Jethro Sands the most, but she wasn’t sure why. All she knew was that she imagined buildings and trees bursting into flame on either side of the road as he drove along, turning his head slowly from side to side. He was threatening, noxious. Dark.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“The book said that people were small gods filled with the power of the Almighty and able to enact their own lives, dispense wisdom and justice.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods

“The jostling in the kitchen, though, was warm and companionable and for Olive, it was a rare spectacle. There was no other occasion that the three sisters came together in anything even approximating harmony. No one called anyone feeble or a martyr. No one got huffy and swept from the room in high dudgeon. There was a quiet, a hushed sense of almost-giggling as if the sisters might in a bizarre and spontaneous moment hang off each other’s necks to laugh about something from their childhood. It never happened but there was the feeling that it could.”
― Jenny Ackland, Little Gods