Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
So many of my books, I don't want to say they have messages, but they have important things to say.
Genius disregards the boundaries of propriety. Genius is permitted to shout if shouting is productive.
I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.
What's important is the preparation for adult life, and the training you'll receive in your Assignment.
There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.
The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after.
I think teens are drawn to these speculative books that portray what might happen and what could happen.
Because I have two houses, I invariably get immersed in a book and then discover it's at the other house.
I majored in English in college, so I read the classic dystopian novels like '1984' and 'Brave New World.'
If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.
It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.
This may sound strange, but at a very early age, at around 3, I was aware that I was smarter than the other kids.
I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.
Gabe?" The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love", Jonas whispered.
Because of fear, they made shelter and found food and grew things. For the same reason, weapons were stored, waiting.
I was a sidelines child: never class president, never team captain, never the one with the most valentines in my box.
She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.
And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.
I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy.
I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.
He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller in the seat. He wanted to disappear, to fade away, not to exist.
There was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship
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.
For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.
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.
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.
Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?
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.
I've always been fascinated by memory and dreams because they are both completely our own. No one else has the same memories. No one has the same dreams.
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
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.
When you lose a child in an accident as I did, it's final - you're not caught in this longing for him, to search for him, knowing he's out there some place.
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 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.
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.
The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.
They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.
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.
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.
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.
If somebody takes the time, a: to read a book that I have written, and then to b: care about it enough to write me and ask questions, surely I owe them a response.
Pretending that there are no choices to be made - reading only books, for example, which are cheery and safe and nice - is a prescription for disaster for the young.
When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay.
When I was a kid in the '50s, during the Eisenhower years, everything seemed to be working fine. I don't recall as a teenager ever worrying about the state of the future world.
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.
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.
Gathering Blue' was a separate book. I wanted to explore what a society might become after a catastrophic world event. Only at the end did I realize I could make it connect to 'The Giver.
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.