Quotes from Lois Lowry

Why do you and I have to hold these memories? It gives us wisdom, The Giver replied.

No one else seemed to feel this kind of passionate attachment to other humans. Not to a newchild, not to a spouse, or a coworker, or friend. She had not felt it toward her own parents or brother. But now, toward this wobbly, drooling toddler—

At dawn, the orderly, disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.

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.

Thomas, she suggested, you and I? We're the ones who will fill in the blank places. Maybe we can make it different.

And apples were always, always red.

It will help when you learn them. Fear dims when you learn things.

I laugh, because he knew what I was thinking, and very few people ever know what I'm thinking.

It's just that...without the memories, it's all meaningless.

a whole world can lie before someone, if love is there when one wakes.

But how did you know? How did you know the pilot was lost?" "I didn't. I used my wisdom, from the memories. I knew that there had been times in the past—terrible times—when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction.

And I've thought of a way to help you with the concept of color. Close your eyes and be still, now. I'm going to give you a memory of a rainbow.

They can't help it. They know nothing

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

The God of Thunder has fallen into the milk pail!

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.

have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for color, for love.

She's sure, absolutely sure, that what she's waiting for will happen, just the way she wants it to; and I'm so uncertain, so fearful my dreams will end up forgotten somewhere, someday, like a piece of string and a paperclip lying in a dish.

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.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.

It be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating what you're leaving.

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?

She reached for Matty and embraced him. Ordinarily uncomfortable with hugs, he would have stiffened his shoulders and drawn back; but now, from exhaustion and affection, he held Kira and to his own amazement felt his eyes fill with tears.

It is much easier to be brave if you don't know everything.