Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Their lost voices must continue to be heard.
I suppose books are my real passion in life.
It's a wonderful thing to write for children.
Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.
You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.
Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.
Children's authors don't talk down or patronise their younger readers.
I am opposed to war, to killing people, to any kind of hatred and violence.
The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy
I was dropped by my publisher after my first two books. But I always believed in myself.
Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.
Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?
I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.
War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.
I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .
... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.
I can remember being eight, and I like writing about that age of innocence when children still have a sense of wonder.
I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.
Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away.
Well you've been brought here against your will, just like I have. If you ask me, we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking.
(J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
What makes a classic is difficult to define. It's entirely subjective, of course. And the term is employed far too promiscuously.
There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.
There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.
It is possible, you know, to drift off to an unknown world and find happiness there. Maybe even more happiness than you've ever known before.
I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.
People try to glorify war, particularly those who aren't actually fighting in them. People tend to make heroes of those who are fighting in them.
What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?
In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.
It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.
...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.
He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.
Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?" Shmuel: "The soldiers. They took all our clothes away." Bruno: "My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."
It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.
But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.
He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly. "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.
Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.
We all are [normal]. Their idea of normal just happens to be different to some other people's idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.
Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.
It occurs to me that even though Zoya and I are both still alive, my life is already over. She will be taken from me soon and there will be no reason for me to continue without her. We are one person, you see. We are GeorgyandZoya.
. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.
He suddenly became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.
I enjoy the research element. There are so many stories from the past that interest me, that I want to learn more about, just as an interested person. And if I'm going to learn, if I'm going to research, it's probably going to lead me to writing a novel.
I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.
Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’ I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.
There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will forever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all.
I was a very quiet child, quite introverted, really. Independent, yes; I didn't need a lot of supervision. Less so than I did when I got older, maybe. But I was a bookish child, not surprisingly. I could sit quite happily in a corner for hours and entertain myself with books.
Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.
Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. As a writer, my interest has become in writing about much more emotional, personal topics. I'm trying to reach into subjects I have never written about before.
With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice.