Lowry Quotes

I didn't reply as he had hoped to a student who emailed me some years later, with the request "Please list all the similes and metaphors in The Giver," I'm sure it contained those as well.) ~ Lois Lowry

And it was lonely, to yearn, all alone. ~ 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

It gets lighter." I awnsered with the truth and regretted the glib taste on my tounge. "I mean, it never goes away. The feelings. They never stop, but it gets...I don't know...livable, I guess. Like when you break your leg, at first it's excruciating and you think your going to die. But eventually after you've had time to heal, it kind of fades into this constant, dull ache." A faint breeze whistled through the leaves of the trees and plants surrounding us and tickled the back of my neck like cold fingers. "You never walk the same again, but eventually you do walk. ~ Lisa Roecker

In the schoolhouse, Mentor, the schoolteacher, gently tutored a mischievous eight-year-old named Gabe, who had neglected his studies to play and now needed help. ~ Lois Lowry

Reading is the most important way to prepare for life. ~ Lois Lowry

A lot of people I know would hate that ending, but not me. I loved it. Mainly because I got to make the book happy. I decided they made it. They made it to the past. I decided the past was our world, and the future was their world. It was parallel worlds. ~ Lois Lowry

The Consul felt a pang. Ah, to have a horse, and gallop away, singing, to someone you loved perhaps, into the heart of all the simplicity and peace in the world; was that not like the opportunity afforded man by life itself? Of course not. Still, just for a moment, it had seemed that it was. ~ Malcolm Lowry

The Giver laughed, then Jonah, too, chuckled reluctantly. ~ Lois Lowry

A bachelor lives like a king and dies like a beggar. ~ L. S. Lowry

And I'm afraid it really is a jungle too," pursued the Consul, "in fact I expect Rousseau to come riding out of it at any moment on a tiger." "What's that?" Mr Quincey said, frowning in a manner that might have meant: And God never drinks before breakfast either.
"On a tiger," the Consul repeated.
The other gazed at him a moment with the cold sardonic eye of the material world. "I expect so," he said sourly. "Plenty tigers. Plenty elephants too ... Might I ask you if the next time you inspect your jungle you'd mind being sick on your own side of the fence? ~ Malcolm Lowry

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

As historian Gary Ferguson writes, "while livestock may be the kindling, the real fuel for the burn is that the federal government is behind the project. . . . Westerners couldn't buy a more perfect evil if they rode straight to hell with a saddlebag full of cash." Or, as one stockman said in 1989, "It's not so much the wolves we're afraid of, it's the wolf managers. ~ William R. Lowry

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

No matter what lies you have to tell yourself to get up and keep fighting, it was always a matter of getting after it every day. ~ Chris 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

Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people, Maria said finally. ~ Lois Lowry

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

We are a product of our families, schools, and churches. Without the liberty and rule of law that characterize America, entrepreneurship would indeed be impossible. Any successful American who is not a patriot is a rank ingrate. ~ Rich Lowry

All of it was ashes now: the smooth wood, the soft edges, the memory of his hands. ~ Lois Lowry

Things could change Gabe. Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents. And everybody would have memories. You know about memories ... Gabe, there could be love. ~ Lois Lowry

The corner was just ahead. ~ Lois Lowry

Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life! ~ Malcolm Lowry

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. ~ Lois Lowry

This new Caleb was a replacement child. The couple had lost their first Caleb, a cheerful little Four. ~ Lois Lowry

But their shoulders were as straight as they had been in the past: in the classroom, on the stage, at the Sabbath table. So there were other sources, too, of pride, and they had not left everything behind. ~ Lois Lowry

Take pride in your pain," her mother had always told her. "You are stronger than those who have none." She ~ Lois Lowry

We're the ones who will fill in the blank places. Maybe we can make it different. ~ Lois Lowry

No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals. ~ Lois Lowry

Because liberalism typically doesn't sell in American presidential politics, liberal candidates tend to run as culturally conservative centrists. ~ Rich Lowry

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. ~ Lois Lowry

And I want you all to remember - that you must not dream yourselves back to the times before the war, but the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one. That is the great gift our country hungers for, something every little peasant boy can look forward to, and with pleasure feel he is a part of - something he can work and fight for. ~ Lois Lowry

The horn of dilemma of energy politics is what really drives concern about this energy in this country, at the gut level for most people, is high gas prices. And if you really want to fight global warming and try to reduce our carbon emissions, the cleanest, easiest, most rational way to do it would to make the price of gas even higher through very stiff gas prices. ~ Rich Lowry

When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong, every single time. ~ Lois Lowry

I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write. ~ Lois Lowry

I was fortunate to live for 3 years in another country, and although we lived in an American compound, still as a young adolescent I did venture into the world of the Japanese with great interest and enjoyment. But many Americans never left that safe and familiar life among their own people. ~ Lois Lowry

If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it. ~ Lois Lowry

...Father dislikes weaponry of any sort. "

"Yes, he's even suspicious of Mother's knitting scissors," Barnaby B pointed out. "He feels all warfare should be conducted with taunts and gibes and vicious rumors. ~ Lois Lowry

The blue was gathered in her hand, and she could feel it quiver, as if it had been given breath and was beginning to live. ~ Lois Lowry

God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light. My heart has the taste of ashes, and my throat is tight and weary with weeping. What is a lost soul? It is one that has turned from its true path and is groping in the darkness of remembered ways - ~ Malcolm Lowry

Sometimes we have to hurt people, in order to keep ourselves whole. We must just do it with love, that's all. ~ Lois Lowry

Don't keep interrupting or I'll never finish the story. ~ Lois Lowry

Oh! Lovely!" said Nanny. "You are an old fashioned family, like us. We are four worthy orphans with a no-nonsense nanny."
"Like Mary Poppins?" suggested the man, with a pleased look of recognition.
"Not one bit like that fly-by-night woman," Nanny said with a sniff. "It almost gives me diabetes just to think of her: all those disgusting spoonfuls of sugar! None of that for me. I am simply a competent and professional nanny ... ~ Lois Lowry

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. ~ Lois Lowry

I'm hungry for a juicy life. I lean out my window at night and I can taste it out there, just waiting for me. ~ Brigid Lowry

How about you hate your sin, and I'll hate my sin and we'll just love each other! ~ Mark Lowry

The children all received their bicycles at Nine; they were not allowed to ride bicycles before then. ~ Lois Lowry

Mine. Kira had stood silently, embarrassed but proud, as the guardian examined the threading she had done. He made no comment, simply nodded and returned the small piece to her. But his eyes had been bright with interest, she could see. Each year following, he had asked to see her work. Kira always stood at her mother's side, never touching the fragile ancient cloth, marveling each time at the rich hues that told the history of the world. Golds and reds and browns. And here and there, faded pale, almost reduced to white, there had once been blue. Her mother showed her the faded places that remained of it. Her mother did not know how to make blue. Sometimes they talked of it, Kira and Katrina, looking at the huge upturned bowl of sky above their ~ Lois Lowry

Your first crush is allowed to be on a doofus."
"Mine won't be. I'll choose a handsome gypsy boy who'll break my heart, or a soft girl with a diamond in her belly button. ~ Brigid Lowry

blue vervain and chamomile, ~ 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

I notice that, in the lecture ... which Prof. Lowry gave recently, in Paris ... he brought forward certain freak formulae for tartaric acid, in which hydrogen figures as bigamist ... I may say, he but follows the loose example set by certain Uesanians, especially one G. N. Lewis, a Californian thermodynamiter, who has chosen to disregard the fundamental canons of chemistry - for no obvious reason other than that of indulging in premature speculation upon electrons as the cause of valency ~ Henry Edward Armstrong

I'm going to be a warrior," Jaybird said to Mouse.
She flew beside him as he walked through tall grasses and rolling hills.
Mouse cocked his head. "Oh? How's that?"
"I'll find a teacher," said Jay. "I'll train and train and become the best, then I'll lead all the other warriors! ~ B.T. Lowry

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

That's all that brave means - not thinking about the dangers. Just thinking about what you must do. Of course you were frightened. I was too, today. But you kept your mind on what you had to do. ~ Lois Lowry

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

The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May, and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year, he said, there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad. ~ Rich 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

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

I don't for one second think about the possibility of censorship when I am writing a new book. I know I am a person who cares about kids and who cares about truth and I am guided by my own instincts, and trust them. ~ 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

I came across an account of a young man named Kim Malthe-Bruun, who was eventually captured and executed by the Nazis when he was only twenty-one years old. I read his story as I had read many others, turning the pages, skimming here and there: this sabotage, that tactic, this capture, that escape. After a while even courage becomes routine to the reader. Then, quite unprepared, I turned the page and faced a photograph of Kim Malthe-Bruun. He wore a turtleneck sweater, and his thick, light hair was windblown. His eyes looked out at me, unwavering on the page. Seeing him there, so terribly young, broke my heart. ~ Lois Lowry

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. ~ Lois Lowry

We're required to learn to swim but we're not allowed in the river," she found herself telling him. ~ Lois Lowry

Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing ~ Lois Lowry

The exemption from rudeness startled him. Reading it again, however, he realized that it didn't compel him to be rude; it simply allowed him the option ~ Lois Lowry

It was my journey and i had to do it without help. I had to find my own strengths, face my own fears. ~ Lois Lowry

Ultimately, the wolves themselves made the reintroduction work. ~ William R. Lowry

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come. ~ Lois Lowry

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

Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control. ~ Rich Lowry

Artist?' Thomas suggested. 'That's a word. I've never heard anyone say it, but I've read it in some of the books. It means, well, someone who makes something beautiful. Would that be a word? ~ Lois Lowry

We need to have the social investments by which to quote unquote distribute some of that wealth. ~ Mike Lowry

The things you're crying about today, you might be laughing about in ten years ... and then again ... maybe not. ~ Mark Lowry

What use were his talons and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasn't there. ~ Malcolm Lowry

'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.' ~ Lois Lowry

Henrik, you need a wife," Mama scolded him. Uncle Henrik laughed and joined Mama on the steps near the kitchen door. "Why do I need a wife, when I have a sister? ~ Lois Lowry

To be the master of tomorrow's dreams, you must first be the servant of today's planning. ~ Vincent Lowry

Well, part of the trick of getting elected president, if you look at George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is convincing the other side, at least temporarily, not to hate and fear. And that, Trump is not going to able to do that ~ Rich Lowry

I just feel like there hasn't been enough time away from all this other stuff and into this new world or sort of big world that it hasn't worn off yet. ~ Mike Lowry

But his mother laughed again in a reassuring, affectionate way. "No, no," she said. "It's just the pills. You're ready for the pills, that's all. That's the treatment for Stirrings. ~ Lois Lowry

Henry glared at Anastasia. 'You quit planning on a rich husband, Anastasia. You're gonna get rich on your own. You and me, if we want husbands, fine. But we won't need them. Like our mothers. My mom could do just fine being a waitress, and your mom could do just fine being an artist. They got husbands 'cos they want them. That Bambie, now maybe she'll need a husband. But not you and me. Got it? ~ Lois Lowry

When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, "weaving fearful vision" ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency. ~ Malcolm Lowry

But perhaps it was only an echo. ~ Lois Lowry

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius. ~ Rich Lowry

The books in his own dwelling were the only books that Jonas had ever seen. He had never known that other books existed. 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. Jonas stared at them. He couldn't imagine what the thousands of pages contained. ~ Lois Lowry

Because of fear, they made shelter and found food and grew things. For the same reason, weapons were stored, waiting. ~ Lois Lowry

Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine. ~ Malcolm Lowry

Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth
and it is this that adds to his isolation and so too his so sense of guilt. ~ Malcolm Lowry

Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration. ~ Malcolm Lowry

The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it. ~ Malcolm Lowry

I hate puns. And, I'm tired of pardoning them. ~ Mark Lowry

Boy," said Anastasia, "you know what I wish? I wish that everybody who loved each other would die at exactly the same time. Then nobody would ever have to miss anyone."

"Well," said her father slowly, "it just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't seem to work that way very often. ~ Lois Lowry

It was apparent that both the Wazirs and the Mahsuds were building up a large lashkar (a gathering of hostile forces); the numbers were reported as about 1,000 armed men. This was the first occasion that I heard the word 'Jihud' mentioned; there are a number of interpretations given to it; in its simplest form it could be a holy war declared by Muslims on the unbelievers of Islam. ~ Michael 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

Some books had shiny pages that showed paintings of landscapes unlike anything Matty had ever seen, or of people costumed in odd ways, or of battles, and there were many quiet painted scenes of a woman holding a newborn child. ~ Lois Lowry

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. ~ Lois Lowry

Trademaster," he said.....

"Who is he?" Claire asked again.
"He is Evil. I don't know how else to describe it. He is Evil, and like all evil, he has enormous power. He tempts. He taunts. And he takes. ~ Lois Lowry

There is no appeasing Putin. Frankly, there is no directly stopping him, either. It is only possible to raise the costs to him of his war, including the military costs. If we won'€t provide military materiel to Ukraine now, we deserve the contempt with which Putin regards us. ~ Rich Lowry

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known. ~ Lois Lowry