Keith Donohue > Quotes

“October proved a riot a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween.”
― Keith Donohue

“Write it down, boy. If you come across a passage in your reading that you’d like to remember, write it down in your little book; then you can read it again, memorize it, and have it whenever you wish.”
― Keith Donohue

“Once I learned to read, I could not imagine my life otherwise.”
― Keith Donohue

“As I let go of the past, the past let go of me. ”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“I am gone and am not coming back, but I remember everything.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“The children will need new stories and fairy tales to see them through their nightmares and daydreams, to transfigure their sorrows and fears at not being able to remain children forever.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“It's only a story.' As if such words made it less real. But I did not believe him even then, for stories were written down, and the words on the page were proof enough. Fixed and permanent in time, the words, if anything, made the people and places more real than the everchanging world.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“I followed her into the library. The pale light from our chamber below dissipated in the room, but I could still make out – my heart leapt at the sight – row after row, shelf above shelf, floor to ceiling, a city of books. Speck turned to me and asked, Now, what shall we read first?”
― Keith Donohue

“To lose one’s name is the beginning of forgetting.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“Between the covers a book can be a sin. I have spent many hours in search of a waking dream. And once having learned to read, I couldn’t imagine my life otherwise. The indifferent children around me didn’t share my enthusiasm for the written word. Some might sit for a good story while told, but if a book had no pictures they showed scant interest.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“(If God wills it)... the number of angels... may be infinite... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create... Atoms and angels, reason and faith... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. ”
― Keith Donohue

“I beg you to understand and accept that no matter what name, I am what I am.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“Allure goes beyond appearances to the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. Others glide through life as if on ice skates. Some women convey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“I would not want to be a child again, for a child exists in uncertainty and danger. Our flesh and blood, we cannot help but fear for them, as we hope for them to make their way in this life.”
― Keith Donohue , The Stolen Child

“Love makes us do wicked things.”
― Keith Donohue, Angels of Destruction

“Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one earthly consolation when time slips out of joint.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other’s reading to share a casual delight.”
― Keith Donohue

“Imaginary friends often leave without warning.”
― Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

“Love is the madness which allows us to believe in magic.”
― Keith Donohue, The Motion of Puppets

“Some times our thoughts and dreams are more real than the rest of our experience and at other momentsthat which happens to us overshadows anything we might imagine.”
― Keith donohue

“The bed in which we spend a third of our lives functions as a kind of protective haven for the true self, the subconscious refuge from the assault of the external world. The bed becomes the restorative womb, where the imagination is nurtured while our resting bodies are safe.”
― Keith Donohue, Centuries of June

“O que a memória perde, a imaginação volta a criar.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“The most merciless thing in the world is love. When love flees, all that remains is memory to compensate.”
― Keith Donohue

“Why do we believe in things we cannot see?”
― Keith Donohue

“The few other shoppers were women like herself. Widows, perhaps, but grandmothers surely, out hunting for birthday gifts or bargains to store away for next winter. They shuffled in a daze from bin to bin, and Margaret read in every face some suffering or disappointment, their hopes and dreams marked down, 40 percent off.”
― Keith Donohue

“He could be alone with her, but it was difficult learning to be alone without her.”
― Keith Donohue, The Motion of Puppets

“Between the covers, a book can be a sin.”
― Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child

“In the dream house, the boy listened for the monster under his bed.”
― Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

“Had you not been born, you would not know that it is like to be alive, and without life, death is impossible to understand.”
― Keith Donohue, The Motion of Puppets

“Pretty soon he would be stronger than she was, and bigger, some real violence in his fist. The day was coming when the ordinary demons of adolescence would wrestle with his private devils, and it could be a hell.”
― Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters