Lois Lowry Quotes

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.

...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going

I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read "The Giver" now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.

People in the know say The Giver was the first young adult dystopian novel.

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.

When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power.

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

What's important is the preparation for adult life, and the training you'll receive in your Assignment.

Today is declared an unscheduled holiday.

So actually, there could be parents-of-the-parents-of-the-parents-of-the parents?

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

Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.

So many of my books, I don't want to say they have messages, but they have important things to say.

Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much.

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.

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.

I think 'The Giver' is such a moral book, so filled with important truths, that I couldn't believe anyone would want to suppress it, to keep it from kids.

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

And it was lonely, to yearn, all alone.

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.

Memory is the happiness of being alone.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

I see all of them. All the colors.

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

Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing

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

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

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known.

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

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

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.

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

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.

It's a funny thing about names, how they become a part of someone.

Think only on the climb. Think on what you control

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.

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.

People do things that turn out badly, often for the most benevolent of reasons.

It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?

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.

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

Fear dims when you learn things.

There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do.

I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon, I guess I just got distraught, watching them.

He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller in the seat. He wanted to disappear, to fade away, not to exist.

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

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.

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.