Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Lois Lowry - Page 2

If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it.

I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate.

In my writing, I focus lenses. I'm almost always seeing when I am writing.

Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.

It's hard to give up the being together with someone.

Evil can do anything, for a price.

It be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating, what you're leaving.

I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste,in fear, and had brought about their own destruction

It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.

They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.

It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything.

Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?

Today is declared an unscheduled holiday.

We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.

Fear dims when you learn things.

Genius disregards the boundaries of propriety. Genius is permitted to shout if shouting is productive.

You will fail. Then they will kill you." - Vandara to Kira, following Kira's trial.

Making lists of reasons was sometimes a good way to figure things out.

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.

Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.

You will be faced, now, with pain of a magnitude that none of us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience. The Receiver himself was not able to describe it, only to remind us that you would be faced with it, that you would need immense courage.

He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.

Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.

Every 'no' means you are that much closer to a 'yes.

-a whole world can lie before someone, if love is there when one wakes.

And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

Gabe?" The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love", Jonas whispered.

Memory is the happiness of being alone.

He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.

I see all of them. All the colors.

It's just that... without the memories it's all meaningless.

If everyting's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!" (Jonas) "It's the choosing that's imortant, isn't it?" The Giver asked him.

I make up the characters in my books, but of course my consciousness is filled with every child I've ever known, including my two grandchildren, my own kids (I had four) and especially myself as a child, because that person still lives inside me, too.

Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.

She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.

I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.

You remember that I told you it was safer not to know. But,' he went on, as his hands moved wuth their sure and practiced motion, 'I will tell you just a little, because you were so very brave.' Brave?' Annemarie asked, surprised. 'No, I wasn't. I was very frightened.' You risked your life.' But I didn't even think about that! I was only thinking of-' He interrupted her,smiling. 'That's all that brave means-not thinking about the dangers. Just thinking about what you must do. Of course you were frightened. I was too, today. But you kept your mind on what you had to do. So did I.

If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.

There's much more. There's all that goes beyond – all ... that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.

I have learned over the course of my many years that it is a bad idea, usually, to investigate piteous weeping but always a fine thing to look into a giggle.

Reading is the most important way to prepare for life.

Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.

But then everyone would be burdened and pained. They don't want that. And that's the real reason The Receiver is so vital to them, and so honored. They selected me--and you-to lift that burden from themselves.

"I liked the feeling of love," [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. "I wish we still had that," he whispered. "Of course," he added quickly, "I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live." [...] "Still," he said slowly, almost to himself, "I did like the light they made. And the warmth."

There was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship

As a shy, introverted, scholarly child (long ago) I don't know what I would have done without libraries! My family moved often. I was always the new kid in town. The library always offered me my first and most important friendship: the place where I felt right at home. I still feel that way today, about libraries.

Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing

What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?

Writing is hard work, and fun, and requires you to keep your backside in a chair when you would sometimes like to put it elsewhere. So the only wisdom is the advice to keep at it, I guess.

And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.

Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.

The writer after all is only half the book, the other half is the reader.

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

I often compare myself as a kid to my own grandchildren, who are around 11 and 14 now. That's the age kids usually read my book. And I remember myself, we'd gone through a world war. My father was an army officer so I was aware of what was going on. But I wasn't bombarded with images of catastrophe like many kids are today.

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.