Lois Lowry Quotes

A stage adaptation of The Giver has been performed in cities and towns across the USA for years. More recently an opera has been composed and performed. And soon there will be a film. Does The Giver have the same effect when it is presented in a different way: It's hard to know. A book, to me is almost sacrosanct: such an individual and private thing. The reader brings his or her own history and beliefs and concerns, and reads in solitude, creating each scene from his own imagination as he does. There is no fellow ticket-holder in the next seat. The important thing is that another medium--stage, film, music--doesn't obliterate a book. The movie is here now, on a big screen, with stars and costumes and a score. But the book hasn't gone away. It has simply grown up, grown larger, and begun to glisten in a new way.
Lois Lowry
it is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything
Lois Lowry
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.
Lois Lowry
I brug you two [gifts] . . . I gots the little here in my pockie.' He dug one hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a handful of nuts and a dead grasshopper. 'Nope. Be the other side.' (Matt)
Lois Lowry
The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.
Lois Lowry
He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.
Lois Lowry
It was harder for the ones who were waiting, Annemarie knew. Less danger, perhaps, but more fear.
Lois Lowry
It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.
Lois Lowry
I cannot kill someone, he thought.
Lois Lowry
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.
Lois Lowry
That day had changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person had found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.
Lois Lowry
To his surprise, Jean kissed him. So often in the past, teasing, she had said she would, one day. Now she did, and it was a quick and fragrant touch to his lips that gave him courage and, even before he started out made him yearn to come back home.
Lois Lowry
Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing
Lois Lowry
When you care about someone and give them something special. Something that they treasire. That's a gift.
Lois Lowry
You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books.
Lois Lowry
Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, "It isn't fair" about everything else.
Lois Lowry
I'm trying to ruin it!" Will had bellowed back. "So I can figure out how to do it perfectly! How can you learn anything if you won't take risks?
Lois Lowry
We're all on our own, aren't we? That's what it boils down to. We come into this world on our own- in Hawaii, as I did, or New York, or China, or Africa or Montana- and we leave it in the same way, on our own, wherever we happen to be at the time- in a plane, in our beds, in a car, in a space shuttle, or in a field of flowers. And between those times, we try to connect along the way with others who are also on their own. If we're lucky, we have a mother who reads to us. We have a teacher or two along the way who make us feel special. We have dogs who do the stupid dog tricks we teach them and who lie on our bed when we're not looking, because it smells like us, and so we pretend not to notice the paw prints on the bedspread. We have friends who lend us their favorite books. Maybe we have children, and grandchildren, and funny mailmen and eccentric great-aunts, and uncles who can pull pennies out of their ears. All of them teach us stuff. They teach us about combustion engines and the major products of Bolivia, and what poems are not boring, and how to be kind to each other, and how to laugh, and when the vigil is in our hands, and when we have to make the best of things even though it's hard sometimes. Looking back together, telling our stories to one another, we learn how to be on our own.
Lois Lowry
It's hard to leave the only place you've known.
Lois Lowry
Do you know that I no longer see colors?"Jonas's heart broke.
Lois Lowry
And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.
Lois Lowry
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.
Lois Lowry
Why do you and I have to hold these memories?''It gives us wisdom.
Lois Lowry
It's just that...without the memories, it's all meaningless.
Lois Lowry
Things could change Gabe. Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents. And everybody would have memories. You know about memories...Gabe, there could be love.
Lois Lowry
It's a funny thing about names, how they become a part of someone.
Lois Lowry
It was because someone who was a real friend was having the exact same feelings I was having, about something that was more important to me than anything else. I bet there are people who go through a whole life and never experience that.
Lois Lowry
It wasn't the same. I'm pretty good at making the best of things, but it wasn't the same.
Lois Lowry
Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, “I’m starving.” Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say “starving” was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had.
Lois Lowry
She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.
Lois Lowry
Over and over. They be making me remember everythings. Me old songs, they just be natural. But now they be stuffing new things into me and this poor head hurts horrid.
Lois Lowry
She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are.
Lois Lowry
She's sure, absolutely sure, that what she's waiting for will happen, just the way she wants it to; and I'm so uncertain, so fearful my dreams will end up forgotten somewhere, someday, like a piece of string and a paperclip lying in a dish.
Lois Lowry
Dying is a very solitary thing. The only thing we can do it be there when she wants us there.
Lois Lowry
Looking back together, telling our stories to one another, we learn how to be on our own.
Lois Lowry
That had day changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.
Lois Lowry
Ravaged all,Bogo tabalTimore toronTotoo now gone...
Lois Lowry
You know, sometimes it's nice to just have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense.
Lois Lowry
I laugh, because he knew what I was thinking, and very few people ever know what I'm thinking.
Lois Lowry
I don't know what she is now. A stranger, mostly. It's as if she has become a part of a different world, one that doesn't include me anymore....
Lois Lowry
... and she was awed to see that vibrant life still struggled to thrive despite such destruction.
Lois Lowry
We're the ones who will fill in the blank places. Maybe we can make it different.
Lois Lowry
Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people," Maria said finally.
Lois Lowry
Lily appeared, wearing her nightclothes, in the doorway. She gave an impatient sigh. 'This is certainly a very LONG private conversation,' she said. 'And there are certain people waiting for their comfort object.'Lily,' her mother said fondly, 'you're very close to being an Eight, and when you're an Eight, your comfort object will be taken away. It will be recycled to the younger children. You should be starting to go off to sleep without it.'But her father had already gone to the shelf and taken down the stuffed elephant which was kept there. Many of the comfort objects, like Lily's, were soft, stuffed, imaginary creatures. Jonas's had been called a bear.Here you are, Lily-billy,' he said. 'I'll come help you remove your hair ribbons.
Lois Lowry
Dangers were no more than odd imaginings, like ghost stories that children made up to frighten one another: things that couldn't possibly happen.
Lois Lowry
We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh.
Lois Lowry
It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.
Lois Lowry
But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.
Lois Lowry
...you can pretend that bad things will never happen. But life's a lot easier if you realize and admit that sometimes they do.
Lois Lowry
Go, " he said. "This is your journey, your battle. Be brave. Find your gift. Use it to save what you love.
Lois Lowry
Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.
Lois Lowry
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.
Lois Lowry
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
Lois Lowry
...That's why we have the Museum, Matty, to remind us of how we came, and why: to start fresh, and begin a new place from what we had learned and carried from the old.
Lois Lowry
...That's why we have the Museum, Matty, to remind us of how we came, and why: to start fresh, and begin a new place from what we had learned and carried from the old.
Lois Lowry
It's hard to give up the being together with someone.
Lois Lowry
It was my journey and i had to do it without help. I had to find my own strengths, face my own fears.
Lois Lowry
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.
Lois Lowry
Memory is the happiness of being alone.
Lois Lowry
Honor,' he said firmly. 'I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.
Lois Lowry