Quotes from John Boyne

I would have seen it all, had I been able to see, but I could see none of it because I had spent my entire life blind and deaf and mute and ignorant, devoid of any senses save the one that governed my sexual compulsions and that had brought me to this terrible place from which, I was certain, there could be no return.

what a strange family I had grown up in and what a peculiar one I would leave behind one day.

I won't be coming back, she replied, taking the ticket from his hands and placing it carefully in her purse, for she had a sense that this might be an item that would be worth holding on to, a paper memory with the date of the beginning of her new life stamped across it in heavy black ink.

I understand that some people prefer the third person plural for a pronoun,' he replied, having recently interviewed a pop singer on his show who'd insisted upon this, leading one of the cameramen to be fired for calling them Sibyl, after the Sally Field movie about the woman with multiple personalities.

You know, some day, when you're all older,' he said, looking around the room, 'you're going to have troubles of your own and you'll have friends who are going through tough times. Maybe it'll even be one of your own children. And when that happens, you'll look back at the way you're all behaving now and wonder whether you might not have been able to show a little more kindness.

Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots.

It was important to look confident, he realized that very early on. After all, there was a terrible tendency among adults to look at children travelling alone as if they were planning a crime of some sort. None of them ever thought that it might just be a young chap on his way to see the world and have a great adventure. They were so small minded, grown-ups. That was one of their many problems.

Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.

prophylactics.

I'm educating strangers on how they can live better lives. And making sure that those with the wrong opinions are held to account.

Wasn't it lonely? Your life, I mean." "Yes." "You're alone?" "Yes." "You live alone?" "I am entirely alone, Marian," I repeated quietly.

how Jesus did it, after all. And look at Christianity. It's huge.' 'Jesus wasn't on social media,' countered Elizabeth.

215 ??????? 2014 "Grandmother never seemed old in comparison to the other boys' grandmothers." ???? Notes From: John Boyne. "Boy in the Striped Pajamas." iBooks.

People that are, you know, constantly alert to every injustice in society, every perceived slight, and who are just desperate to let you know when they've found one. They seek them out with all the urgency of truffling pigs.

Con los árboles pasaba todo lo contrario que con las personas: éstas, cuanto mayores eran, más pequeñas parecían volverse. Con los árboles, funcionaba al revés.

I would have dearly liked to close the French doors between us for a bit of peace, but Mam wouldn't allow it; she said that solitude would give me ideas and the last thing a boy of my age needed was ideas.

It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.