Lois Lowry Quotes

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

“They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely.”

“But there was nothing left to do but continue”

“If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!”

“I don’t know what you mean when you say ‘the whole world’ or ‘generations before him.‘I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

“His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: “Do you lie?” But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.”

“Always in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something--he could not grasp what-that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sled to a stop. He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there.”

“You may lie.”

“It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?”

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

“I liked the feeling of love,” he 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.”

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

“But why can’t everyone have the memories? I think it would seem a little easier if the memories were shared. You and I wouldn’t have to bear so much by ourselves, if everybody took a part.” The Giver sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “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.”

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

“He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. They were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt.”

“...how could you describe a hill and snow to someone who had never felt height or wind or that feathery, magical cold?”

“There was never any comfortable way to mention or discuss one’s successes without breaking the rule against bragging, even if one didn’t mean to.”

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

“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.”

“It was as simple as that. Once he had yearned for choice. then, when he had had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving. But if he had stayed... His thoughts continued. If he had stayed, he would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for color, for love.”

“He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself”

“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.”

“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?”

“It’s just that... without the memories it’s all meaningless.”

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

“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.”

“Once I had three daughters. Tonight I am proud to have three daughters again.”

“It was only in the fairy tales that people were called upon to be so brave, to die for one another. Not in real-life Denmark.”

″‘Where is my necklace?’ she asked. ‘What did you do with it?’ ‘I hid it in a safe place,’ Annemarie told her. ‘A very secret place where no one will ever find it. And I will keep it there for you until it is safe for you to wear it again.’

″‘What’s happening?’ Annemarie asked when she and Ellen were alone with Papa in the living room. ‘Something’s wrong. What is it?’ Papa’s face was troubled. ‘I wish that I could protect you children from this knowledge,’ he said quietly.”

“For a moment, to Annemarie, listening, it seemed like all the earlier times, the happy visits to the farm in the past with summer daylight extending beyond bedtime, with the children tucked away in the bedrooms and the grownups downstairs talking.”

“It is he who heals the broken in spirit and binds up their wounds, he who numbers the stars one by one...”

“It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything. And so your mama does not know everything. Neither do I. We know only what we need to know.”

“Annemarie felt a surge of sadness; the bond of their friendship had not broken, but it was as if Ellen had moved now into a different world, the world of her own family and whatever lay ahead for them.”

“Friends will take care of them. That’s what friends do.”

“You will, little one. You saved her life, after all. Someday you will find her again. Someday the war will end. All wars do.”

Anastasia deals with everyday problems such as popularity, the wart on her thumb or the new arrival of her little brother, Sam. The book is written in episodic fashion, each chapter self-contained with minimal narrative link to the others. At the end of each chapter is a list written by Anastasia, listing her likes and dislikes, showing the character’s growth and development through the story.

“There were so many poems being born in Anastasia’s head that she ran all the way home from school to find a private place to write them down, the way her cat had once found a very private place -the pile of ironing in the pantry - in which to create kittens. But she discovered that it wasn’t easy. She hung the Do No Disturb sign from the Parker House Hotel on the doorknob of her bedroom door.”

“Anastasia Krupnik was ten. She had hair the color of Hubbard squash, fourteen freckles across her nose (and seven others in places that she preferred people not to know about), and glasses with large owl-eyed rims, which se had chosen herself at the optician’s.”

“Anastasia’s father, Dr. Myron Krupnik, was a professor de literature and had read just about every book in the world, which may have been why he knew so much about warts. He had a bear the color of Hubbard squash, though not much hair in his head, and he wore glasses for astigmatism, as Anastasia did, although his were not quite as owly.”

“In the bookcases of their apartment were four volumes of poetry which had written by Myron Krupnik. But the fourth book was her favorite. Her father’s photograph showed him bald and bearded, the way she had always know him. The poems were soft sounding and quiet, when he read them to her. The book was called Bittersweet; and it said, inside, ‘To someone special: Anastasia’.”

“Awed, unique, and proud were three words that she had written on page seven of her green notebook. She kept lists of her favorite words, she kept important private information; and she kept things that she though might be the beginnings of poems, in her green notebook. No one had ever looked inside the green notebook except Anastasia.”

‘I have fallen in love,’ Anastasia told her parents one morning at breakfast. It made her feel a little shy to talk about it. But she felt that her parents ought to know. Her father blew a ripple into his coffee thoughtfully. ‘You seem a little young for that,’ he said.”

“So she wrote on her green notebook, ‘Why don’t I like Mrs Westvessel?’ and began to make a list of reasons. Making lists of reasons was sometimes a good way to figure things out. ‘Reason one’ wrote Anastasia, ‘Because she isn’t a good teacher.’

“She stomped down the hall to her bedroom. In the darkest corner of her closet she found the heavy canvas bag that left over from her father’s days in the Navy, it had Krupnik M A stenciled on the side. Once, when she was smaller, her father had put her into it, pulled the drawstring closed, and carried her around the apartment while she giggled.”

“She had been angry the day she came down with the flu and had a temperature of 103° and had to miss the special Children’s Concert that the Boston Symphony was doing, and her parents gave the tickets to the terrible Truesdales who lived in the upstairs apartment.”

“Anastasia went home. She wanted to tell her parents about her decision to become a Catholic, but she knew that she had to tell them at the right moment, in the right way, because if would be something of a surprise. They might even be a little upset, she suspected, that she was changing her name.”

“Jennifer groaned. ‘How do you know? How can you tell when you’re in love?’ That was something that Anastasia had thought about a great deal. She had stood in the corner drugstore, reading a questionnaire called “is it really love?′ in Cosmopolitan until the pharmacist, Mr. Belden had said, ‘Pay for ir or close it up, girlie.”

“But when Mrs. Westvessel announced one day in the fall that the class would begin writing poetry, Anastasia was the happiest she had ever been in school. Somewhere, off in a place beyond her own thoughts, Anastasia could hear Mrs. Westvessel’s voice. She was reading some poems to the class; she was talking about poetry and how it was made.”

“She hesitated and glanced at her mother, fearful that she had said the wrong thing, the thing that would bring the pained look to her mother’s face.”

“It is important to be one of the crowd, always. Be one of many. Be sure that they never have reason to remember your face.”

“Annemarie admitted to herself, snuggling there in the quiet dark, that she was glad to be an ordinary person who would never be called upon for courage.”

“My parents have always told me that education is the most important thing. Whatever happens, I must get an education.”

“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. ‘And they lived happily ever after,’ Annemarie recited, whispering into the dark, completing the tale for her sister, who slept beside her, one thumb in her mouth.”