Thorn Birds - Colin McCullough

Just try to love a man — and he kills you. Just feel that you cannot live without someone — and he kills you.

No one else can ever feel your pain.

I could never forget you, Meggie, not as long as I live. And for my punishment I’m going to live a long, long time.

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follow an immunatable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thron enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.

A man who has nothing to lose has everything to gain, and a man without feelings cannot be hurt.

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 among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine.
And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale.
One superlative song, existence the price.
But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles.
For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain….
Or so says the legend.

I wonder why you tug so at my nonexistent heart?

The best ones usually have the worst time of it.

Knowing the wrongs couldn’t alter them.

The pit closed in, suffocating. Meggie stood there, and realized it was too late.

She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds—while not believing it.

We all have contempt for whatever there’s too many of. Out here it’s sheep, but in the city it’s people.

Men believe that needing a woman is a weakness. I don’t mean to sleep with; I mean to need, really need.

The terrible grief of having to witness a ruined life, a ruined man.

To feel it, respond to it, and deny it.

I did it all to myself, I have no one else to blame. And I cannot regret one single moment of it.