Quotes by Lois Lowry

Why do you and I have to hold these memories?It gives us wisdom.

Its just that...without the memories, its all meaningless.

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.

And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.

Do you know that I no longer see colors?Jonass heart broke.

Its hard to leave the only place youve known.

Were all on our own, arent we? Thats what it boils down to. We come into this world on our own- in Hawaii, as I did, or New York, or China, or Africa or Montana- and we leave it in the same way, on our own, wherever we happen to be at the time- in a plane, in our beds, in a car, in a space shuttle, or in a field of flowers. And between those times, we try to connect along the way with others who are also on their own. If were lucky, we have a mother who reads to us. We have a teacher or two along the way who make us feel special. We have dogs who do the stupid dog tricks we teach them and who lie on our bed when were not looking, because it smells like us, and so we pretend not to notice the paw prints on the bedspread. We have friends who lend us their favorite books. Maybe we have children, and grandchildren, and funny mailmen and eccentric great-aunts, and uncles who can pull pennies out of their ears. All of them teach us stuff. They teach us about combustion engines and the major products of Bolivia, and what poems are not boring, and how to be kind to each other, and how to laugh, and when the vigil is in our hands, and when we have to make the best of things even though its hard sometimes. Looking back together, telling our stories to one another, we learn how to be on our own.

Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, Ill stop saying, It isnt fair about everything else.

Im trying to ruin it! Will had bellowed back. So I can figure out how to do it perfectly! How can you learn anything if you wont take risks?

You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if youre lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. Its the same with books.

When you care about someone and give them something special. Something that they treasire. Thats a gift.

Teasings part of the fun that comes before kissing

To his surprise, Jean kissed him. So often in the past, teasing, she had said she would, one day. Now she did, and it was a quick and fragrant touch to his lips that gave him courage and, even before he started out made him yearn to come back home.

That day had changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person had found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.

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 cannot kill someone, he thought.

It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.

It was harder for the ones who were waiting, Annemarie knew. Less danger, perhaps, but more fear.

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

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.