What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.

We all are [normal]. Their idea of normal just happens to be different to some other people's idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.

... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.

I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .

But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.