Quotes by Jennifer Donnelly

You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.

He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.

An escape can become escapism before we even know it. Books are wonderful things, but you cant live in someone elses story. You have to live your own story.

I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.

What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if Id just stumbled into Ali Babas cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Miltons devil or Austens boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poes who couldnt think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor.

But eating was the last thing on my mind. And I didnt see how Miss Wilcox could eat, or teach, or sleep or ever find any reason to leave this room. Not with all these books in it, just begging to be read.

You fear you will fail at the very thing you were born for. And your fear torments you...instead of shunning your fear, you must let it speak and listen carefully to what its trying to tell you. It will give you good counsel.

Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. “I can’t,” she said. “Once I go in, there’s no way out again. This is real. You’re real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream.”The witch cocked her head. “Only a dream?” she said mockingly. “Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods’ powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream.” She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. “The merman Traho knows this. He’s coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you.

Headstrong is just a word, Katie - a word others call you when you dont do what they want.

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.

Hes wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though its December. Beautiful people dont need coats. Theyve got their auras to keep them warm.

Its a good thing you and your pills werent around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. Youd have drugged Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Taking of Christ right the hell out of them.

I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers arent exactly literary. So what? Theyre fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!

History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.

Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.

History is fiction.

One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it werent for decent people.