Lois Lowry Quotes & Sayings

Fear dims when you learn things" -Alys — Lois Lowry

You suggested, Jonas, that perhaps she wasn't brave enough? I don't know about bravery: what it is, what it means. I do know that I sat here numb with horror. Wretched with helplessness. And I listened as Rosemary told them that she would prefer to inject herself. — Lois Lowry

There would be no way for anyone to get caught in the act of wondering, — Lois Lowry

Well ... ," Jonas had to stop and think it through. "If everything's the same, then there are no choices! I want to wake up in the morning and DECIDE things! A blue tunic, or a red one? — Lois Lowry

He wondered what lay in the far distance where he had never gone. The land didn't end beyond those nearby communities. Were there hills Elsewhere? Were there vast wind-torn areas like the place he had seen in memory, the place where the elephant died? — Lois Lowry

IGNOMINIOUS means shamefully weak and ineffective. Oliver Twist saying, "Please sir, might I have some more?" would be ignominious, except that he isn't shameful, just sort of pathetic. This book has ignominious illustrations. They are shamefully weak because the person who drew them is not an artist. — Lois Lowry

He called after her as she walked away on the path.
"Alys? Why were we dancing?"
"Take your mind there again," she called back. "You'll remember!"
To herself she murmured, shaking her head with amusement as her eyes twinkled at her own memory.
"Only thirteen. But we was barefoot and flower-strewn and foolish with first love. — Lois Lowry

She would die, Claire realized, before she would give up the love she felt for her son. — Lois Lowry

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

They both walked to the center of the room. Jonas put his tunic back on. 'Goodbye, sir,' he said. 'Thank you for my first day.'
The old man nodded to him. He looked drained, and a little sad.
'Sir?' Jonas said shyly.
'Yes? Do you have a question?'
'It's just that I don't know your name. I thought you were The Receiver, but you say that now I'm The Receiver. So I don't know what to call you.'
The man had sat back down in the comfortable upholstered chair. He moved his shoulders around as if to ease away an aching sensation. He seemed terribly weary.
'Call me The Giver,' he told Jonas. — Lois Lowry

Matt, he say that a giftie makes a person like you best of all." Kira sighed in exasperation. "No, that's not the way it is. A gift - " She gave up. "Never mind. Tell us where he went." "He be getting you some blue!" "Blue? What do you mean?" "Dunno, miss. But Matt, he said it. He be saying they got blue yonder, and he be getting you some. — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

Fear dims when you learn things. — Lois Lowry

Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, and the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted their wish that the border be closed so that 'we' (Matty shuddered at the use of 'we') would not have to share the resources anymore.
'We need all the fish for ourselves.
Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own.
They can't even speak right.
We can't understand them.
They have too many needs.
We don't want to tale care of them.'
And finally: 'We've done it long enough. — Lois Lowry

So," Herbalist said with a smile, "you can't dance or chew meat. But if you can hear the birds sing and watch the wind in the leaves, then you still have much pleasure left. — Lois Lowry

Thnks fr th mmrs- Gabe — Lois Lowry

The God of Thunder has — Lois Lowry

We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh. — Lois Lowry

Fours, Fives, and Sixes all wore jackets that fastened down the back so that they would have to help each other dress and would learn interdependence. — Lois Lowry

You will be faced, now, with pain of a magnitude that none of us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience. The Receiver himself was not able to describe it, only to remind us that you would be faced with it, that you would need immense courage. — Lois Lowry

Think only on the climb. Think on what you control — Lois Lowry

I cooked for him like a wife and washed his clothes and was a wife in other ways too terrible to mention. — Lois Lowry

There was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship — Lois Lowry

At dawn, the orderly, disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past. — Lois Lowry

I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult. — Lois Lowry

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

Pretending doesn't keep you safe. — Lois Lowry

- My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it ...
- They know nothing. — Lois Lowry

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

It was so important to him, and he made it important to me: poetry, and language, and how we use it to remind ourselves of how our lives should be lived . . . — Lois Lowry

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

The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.
[from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] — Lois Lowry

Why do you and I have to hold these memories?" "It gives us wisdom," The Giver replied. — Lois Lowry

And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave ... Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.
And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in. — Lois Lowry

Sometimes he awoke with a feeling of fragments afloat in his sleep, but he couldn't seem to grasp them and put them together into something worthy of telling at the ritual. — Lois Lowry

They can't help it. They know nothing — Lois Lowry

We're the ones who fill in the blank spaces. Maybe we can make it different. — Lois Lowry

Don't grow much more, or you will be taller than I am, little Longlegs! Annemarie smiled, but Peter's comment was no longer the lighthearted fun of the past. It was only a brief grasp at something that had gone. — Lois Lowry

Jonas went and sat beside them while his father untied Lily's hair ribbons and combed her hair. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders. With all of his being he tried to give each of them a piece of the memory: not of the tortured cry of the elephant, of their towering, immense creature and the meticulous touch with which it had tended its friend at the end.
But his father had continued to comb Lily's long hair, and Lily, impatient, had finally wriggled under her brother's touch. "Jonas," she said, "you're hurting me with your hand. — Lois Lowry

Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, "I'm starving." Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say "starving" was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had. — Lois Lowry

Forgetting her promise of no questions, Littlest suddenly asked, "Might we be human?" But Fastidious did not reply. — Lois Lowry

He remembered that in the art books he had leafed through at Leader's, many paintings depicted death. A severed head on a platter. A battle, and the ground strewn with bodies. Swords and spears and fire; and nails being pounded into the tender flesh of a man's hands. Painters had preserved such pain through beauty. — Lois Lowry

she said, "thank you for your childhood. — Lois Lowry

It was the helplessness that scared the both of us. — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

Oh the weather outside is frightful... — Lois Lowry

That's why they call you Seer. You see more than most. — Lois Lowry

NEFARIOUS means utterly, completely wicked. The character in The Wizard of Oz could have been called the Nefarious Witch of the West but authors like to use the same beginning consonant, often. Perhaps L. Frank Baum crossed out nefarious after wicked came to his mind. Thank goodness, because Nefarious would be a terrible name for a musical. — Lois Lowry

She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist. — Lois Lowry

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction ... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. — Lois Lowry

Mama and papa when it gets cold," Mama said, smiling. "I remember when Kirsti slept between you and Papa. She was supposed to stay in her crib, but in the middle of the night she would climb out and get in with you," Annemarie said, smoothing the pillows on the bed. Then she hesitated and glanced at her mother, fearful that she had said the wrong thing, the thing that would bring the pained look to her mother's face. The days when little Kirsti slept in Mama and Papa's room were the days when Lise and Annemarie shared this bed. But Mama was laughing quietly. — Lois Lowry

Kira, your leg will take a great deal out of me. I'll have to sleep, after, maybe for a whole day or even longer. And I don't have much time."

She looked at him quizzically. "Time for what?"

"I'll explain. But for now, I think we should start. If I do it right away, I can sleep completely through the night and almost all of the morning. You can use that time to become accustomed to being whole..."

"I [i]am[/i] whole," she said defiantly. — Lois Lowry

I wish I could have a cupcake, — Lois Lowry

I think when you've had success, publishers and reviewers and readers are willing to let you try something new if you've already proven yourself. They're excited about what you're doing, you have people interested in it, and actually waiting for it. It's empowering. — Lois Lowry

I cannot kill someone, he thought. — Lois Lowry

With her toddler playing on the floor by her feet, his widow now nursed her new baby on the porch of her homeplace, attended by comforting women who sat with their knitting and embroidery and spoke only of happy things. — Lois Lowry

Eating together as always: Lily chattering away, Mother and Father making their customary — Lois Lowry

way, he had hoped he would not. His life would — Lois Lowry

People can lie in letters, but they tend not to. They certainly lie in memoirs. — Lois Lowry

Ou have more than you know. And people will want what you have. — Lois Lowry

Don't ever be sorry for that. Weren't we lucky that Papa thought so quickly and found the pictures? And weren't we lucky that Lise had dark hair when she was a baby? It turned blond later on, when she was two or so." "In between," Papa added, "she was bald for a while!" Ellen and Annemarie both smiled tentatively. For a moment their fear was eased. — Lois Lowry

Annemarie's silvery blond hair flew behind her, — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

With a rhythmic sound of languid water lapping hypnotically against a beach nearby. — Lois Lowry

When you care about someone and give them something special. Something that they treasire. That's a gift. — Lois Lowry

Do you know that I no longer see colors?
Jonas's heart broke. — Lois Lowry

I like being right smack in the middle. — Lois Lowry

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 — Lois Lowry

There are German soldiers on every corner. — Lois Lowry

And I've thought of a way to help you with the concept of color.
Close your eyes and be still, now. I'm going to give you a memory of a rainbow. — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later. — Lois Lowry

I said it because it's true. It's the way — Lois Lowry

As female hormones decrease, they're replaced with an overwhelming urge to grow delphinium. — Lois Lowry

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens. — Lois Lowry

Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained too, an understanding of solitude and its joy. — Lois Lowry

You have the colors," The Giver told him. "And you have the courage. I will help you to have the strength. — Lois Lowry

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

How could you describe a hill and snow to someone who had never felt height or wind or that feathery, magical cold? — Lois Lowry

Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child. — Lois Lowry

Actually," the chief guardian said in a calm voice, "you have no rights at all. But I am going to tell you the decision so that there will be no misunderstanding. "The orphan girl Kira will stay. She will have a new role." He gestured toward the Singer's robe, still spread out on the table. "Kira," he said, looking at her, "you will continue your mother's work. You will go beyond her work, actually, since your skill is far greater than hers was. First, you will repair the robe, as your mother always did. Next, you will restore it. Then your true work will begin. You will complete the robe. — Lois Lowry

I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance. — Lois Lowry

It was so - oh, I wish language were more precise! The red was so beautiful!"
The Giver nodded. "It is."
"Do you see it all the time?"
"I see all of them. All the colors."
"Will I? — Lois Lowry

But this room's walls were completely covered by bookcases, filled, which reached to the ceiling. There must have been hundreds - perhaps thousands - of books, their titles embossed in shiny letters. — Lois Lowry

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. — Lois Lowry

She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are. — Lois Lowry

Alys told her that it was the way of women, to tote a newborn and then adjust as it grew until by the time the child was plump and heavy, the weight seemed naught. — Lois Lowry

But perhaps it was only an echo. — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

You've ruined it now," she said, looking sadly at the crumpled spotted wings in Bethan's outstretched hand. "It deserved to live, and to fly. — Lois Lowry

I will take care of that, sir. I will take care of that, sir," Jonas mimicked in a cruel, sarcastic voice. "I will do whatever you like, sir". I will kill people, sir. Old people? Small new born people? I'd be happy to kill them, sir. Thank you for your instructions, sir. How may I help y-" He couldn't seem to stop. — Lois Lowry

The grand surprise has really been the fact that being an author, which to me had always implied being a private person, actually requires you to be a public person as well, and those are two separate entities to me. — Lois Lowry

He seemed much older and very tired, defeated. — Lois Lowry

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

There are only three weeks left, Matty. After the border closes it will be too late. She won't be allowed to come. You must bring her here before that happens.
"If you don't, Matty, I will never see her again."
"It always seems strange to me when you say 'see.'"
The blind man smiled. "I see in my heart, Matty. — Lois Lowry

His thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and his eyes were very troubled. — Lois Lowry

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. — Lois Lowry

I often compare myself as a kid to my own grandchildren, who are around 11 and 14 now. That's the age kids usually read my book. And I remember myself; we'd gone through a world war. My father was an army officer so I was aware of what was going on. But I wasn't bombarded with images of catastrophe like many kids are today. — Lois Lowry

CONSPIRACY is a plan to do something subversive. Three guys planning a camping trip . . . nah, that's just three guys planning a camping trip. But three guys planning to take a camping trip and rob a bank along the way . . . that's a conspiracy. — Lois Lowry

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