Joelle Baird

“Why do they hate us so much anyway?’ I asked after a lengthy pause. ‘If they’re not queer themselves, then what does it matter to them if someone else is?’ ‘I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,’ she said with a shrug.”
― 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

“He tells a story, and that's what I like. Does this fella tell a story? He doesn't spend twenty pages describing the colour of the sky?'
'He hasn't so far.'
'Good. Jeffrey Archer never talks about the colour of the sky and I like that in a writer. I'd say Jeffrey Archer has never even looked up at the sky his entire life.'
'Especially now that he's in prison,' I suggested.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“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