Quotes from John Boyne

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.

Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.

I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.

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.

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.

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

I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Every man is afraid of women as far as I can see," said Julian, displaying an understanding of the universe far beyond his years. "That's true," she said. "But only because most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power. They fear a change of the world order.

Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away.

Children's authors don't talk down or patronise their younger readers.

I can remember being eight, and I like writing about that age of innocence when children still have a sense of wonder.

It's a wonderful thing to write for children.

Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.

There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.

I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.

He didn't want to play football. He wanted to be told the truth.

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.

You're my best friend, Shmuel,' he said. 'My best friend for life.