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.
John BoyneHe suddenly became convinced that if he didnโt do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.
John BoyneChildren's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.
John BoyneAnd I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but itโs difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.
John Boyne