John Boyne > Quotes

“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.”
― John Boyne

“Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“...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.”
― John Boyne , The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“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.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that? ”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“. . .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.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Their lost voices Must continue to be heard.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“Perhaps it would be a good idea if everyone just stopped writing for a couple of years and allowed readers to catch up.”
― John Boyne, A Ladder to the Sky

“What you know about women,” replied Maude, “could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“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.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Heil Hitler," he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, "Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“It's as if she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are wrong for us.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“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.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

“I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“If there is one thing I've learned in more than seven decades of life, it's that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what's around the corner and it's often something unpleasant.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' -The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“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. ”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“(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.”
― John Boyne, The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

“I’ve spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it’s out beyond the harbour on the high seas, but it’s very nice to look at.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“You look like a Greek God sent down by the immortal Zeus from Mount Olympus to taunt the rest of us inferior beings with your astonishing beauty, I said, which somehow in translation came out as "you look fine, why?”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“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.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“It's not easy losing someone," she said. "It never goes away, does it?" "The Phantom Pain, they call it," I said. "Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies