I have learned over the course of my many years that it is a bad idea, usually, to investigate piteous weeping but always a fine thing to look into a giggle.

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

We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity.

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

Making lists of reasons was sometimes a good way to figure things out.

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.